Shells - What once held life pt.1

I started a project last year collecting random shells and shell fragments (mostly Conch shells).  I started to explore the shells initially as abstract forms similarly to the pepper still life images made popular by Group f64 member Ansel Adams.

After failing miserably at trying to capture the kind of imagery that would evoke the same emotional response that I felt the first time I saw one of Ansel's prints on display.  I gave up.

I have long come to the conclusion that I am no master.  And the first time I saw Ansel's images i was really unimpressed.

Well truth be told the way the gallery in Toronto had his exhibition arranged was rather confusing to me.  You were first greeted by his "Pre F64" work.  Half worn original prints hardly the work of a true master.  To be more precise it was more of what I call a "mind grine".  The work looked poor, they were bunched together like items on a supermarket shelf.  I was confused. Where was the father of modern photography I had read about all these years.  At that moment I was lost.

My boss who was there as well was quite confused as well.  He had been to a exhibition years before and these "shells" on the walls where not, we concluded, the work of Ansel Adams.  The prints were done on "cheap" looking paper, quite close to the texture of newspaper.  They lacked contrast.  Emotion.

Just as a chess master plays, moving each piece with calculated motive so I assumed the curator planned the layout of the exhibition.  Hence the "mind grine".   At the end of the "supermarket shelf" prints was a arrow with the wording "exhibition continues". 

Around the dark corner lay prints that would capture even the most idle of gazes.  They took you into the mind of a master.   Staring at "Moonrise, Hernandez" I was shocked.  How could I have doubted that this was Ansel Adam's work and not some sham.  The books  that bear his name do him no justice. 


Squirrel!!!!


If you didn't get that last line I suggest you close this browser window.  Get off you bum and go out and enjoy life a bit, watch a movie.  


Where I was going with all this?


Ansel had to start some where.  He was no prodigy.  He was talented.  He worked hard.  His first works were "normal" at best.  He, however, persevered.  And today is dubbed the "father of modern day photography". 

Why the Ansel story.  Well after exhausting composition of curves of conch shells it hit me.  These once held, protected and housed a living creature.   What follows is a conch "memorial" of sorts.  A shell on a bed of pebbles in a pine box surrounded by darkness. 

Squirrel!!