photographs – Page 4 – Sally Wakelin

Slatted Shadows and Reflections

The image of the sunlight making slatted shadows on the wall reminded me of what I love about the kind of jewellery I make – repetition of parallel cuts.

All these fabulous photographs were taken by Matthew Booth who skilfully created exactly the kind of photos I had envisaged and intuitively understood how to transform mere objects into visions extending into the reflective surfaces.

All these pieces are made in Sterling silver and are available for sale from the Online shop

Sunlight

Photography

I am lucky enough to live in a house which is sunlit nearly all day, intensified by mirrors. I noticed this pot of daffodils was being lit from the “wrong” side, from the north, the sunlight was no longer falling on the table but was being reflected back onto the daffodils by a mirror. It gave the room a lovely sense of being lit up from inside.

Later, when the sun had moved round to the back of the house it was much weaker but still made some interesting shadows through the wooden slatted blind on the Spode “Velamour” vase.

Stairs

Architecture, Photography

I have no idea where this started but it seems I have a thing about stairs, maybe its the structure – I am drawn to repetion in design, or maybe its the prospect of what might be waiting up there, just out of sight. Architects these days seem to pay more attention to stairs, making them interesting as structures in themselves rather than simply a means of progression between floors.

Davis Chipperfield at The Hepworth in Wakefiel d has used polished concrete, compressed paper and unusual 12.5 degree angles and roof lights bringing daylight in through toplight strips, to create a serene space.

RIBA article

The Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto underwent a redevelopment by architect Frank Gehry in 2004, called Transformation AGO, which succesfully “unites the disparate areas of the building that had become a bit of a “hodgepodge” after six previous expansions dating back to the 1920s”. A delightfully sinuous structure clad in fine grained veneer with concealed lighting, wends its way from top to bottom through the existing Classical style building, with views within the galleries as well as the Toronto skyline.

A visit to in Paris, a friend’s house – a converted greengrocer’s shop, a simple wrought iron bannister on the steep concrete steps made by the local blacksmith compared to its counterpart in the corridor, leading to the separate apartment upstairs. Parisian domestic stairwells always seem to squeeze in a lightwell however narrow the space.

An escalator rather than a stairway on the outside of the Centre Pompidou is a lit by a continous flow from red through orange, green and purple lighting.

The Tour Eiffel being painted during its construction in the late 1880’s, the painter seemingy quite at home on these “stairs” Photo by Marc Riboud

The grand entrance Pyramide du Louvre designed by the architect I. M. Pei – again an escalator not a staircase as such but with echoes of Eiffel’s ironwork in the modern lightweight metal structure supporting the glass pyramid.