There is a particular quality of light – indirect, natural light – which looks uniquely beautiful when rendered in the gelatin silver black and white process. It becomes an ambient glow that seems to emanate from within and to be part of space itself. This quality of light characterizes and connects all my series regardless of the subject matter, from the radiant glow of the Extended Landscapes and Interior Light series to the diffused luminosity of the translucent scrims used in my studio work.
Although I am a photographer, I think like a painter in that my concerns are largely formal: my aim is to create tension, plasticity, texture, and, especially, spatial ambiguity in which figure (or abstract form) and ground seem to merge with or emerge from one another. Above all, I want the image to feel ‘charged.’
Additionally, I have been strongly influenced by abstract expressionist painting – not as a style, but as an approach to creating images. To abstract is “to pull away from” – in other words, to make something less literal, less physically descriptive, and more inward looking. As a lens-based photographer I am unable to create an image directly from my head as a painter can, but I can still “pull away” from the real world by blurring, veiling, cropping, partially obscuring, and otherwise de-literalizing what is in front of my lens. What drives all of my work is a desire to make visible a quality that is invisible—beyond the ‘thing-itself.’ There is still a subject in front of the lens. It still matters. But, as Ad Reinhardt said, “What is not there is more important than what is there.”
Contact: lsilvergel@gmail.com or 212-787-4028