Beth Crow

Select works from:
Forms & Reflections
October 10-31
Reception Tuesday, October 10
See also: J. Gail & Criis Greer

Artist's Statement

     All my life I have enjoyed taking pictures, trying to capture a moment in time. I first started studying photography at Ferrum College as a means of aiding my drawing and painting classes. My camera and dark room soon replaced my easel and palette. During the last two years I have been studying photography at Hollins University.

     The camera has become a means for my meeting people, breaking barriers of unfamiliarity. Through the view of the lens, their world becomes mine, even if only for a few seconds. My photographic eye sees images, shapes and tones I normally would have passed by. There have even been times when I haven’t noticed these special images until they slowly appeared on the photographic paper in the developer.

     One segment of this show is a collection of window reflections, revealing scenes in front of the camera as well as behind. Some of these reflect personalities of those in the buildings, others identify a community and its surroundings.

     The other black and white photographs in this show are a collection of landscape scenes, a few of which also repeat the reflection idea. In practicing the Zone System, I sought peaceful environments with tonal quality.

     This collection represents work from two medium format cameras, the window scenes with a Mamiya and the landscape scenes with a Pentax 6x7. The landscape senses were toned in Selenium, the 8 x 10 on warm toned paper and the 11 x 14 on cold toned paper.

*all work copyright the artist