On Dianna Jazwinski's first appearance on this website, I made the case that some photography can justifiably be called art.
That's most certainly true of the images which Dianna produces.
Here we have a piece of her recent work: Dahlia Garden.
When I first saw this, I simply wanted to be quiet in front of it.
But that would make for a poor review, so some words...
Dianna puts these dark backgrounds to very effective use. They highlight and isolate her subject, and lend an almost hyper-real appearance to the image. The limitations of online reproduction mean that some of that sharpness is lost. All the more reason for seeing her work in the flesh.
A lot of people will be put in mind of Dutch floral still-lifes from the seventeenth century: contrived fantasies in ornate containers. But look again. This is something else entirely. If we were a group discussing this, I would ask "And why do you think the artist has framed this image the way she has?" I would ask partly because I'm not sure, but it's intriguing. Another artist would have shown us the stalks neatly tied with twine or thrust into a container. Nothing wrong with that, but it has a neatness about it which closes down the imagination. But not here. For me, what Dianna has done creates a sense that we are being shown something which will disappear in a moment or two; something we are fortunate to have caught at the right moment. It's as though she has photographed a ripple on the surface of a pond.
And I love the to-ing and fro-ing my mind does with this picture. We know that studio work like this is carefully staged and arranged, yet I still find myself caught up with the illusion of movement and depth. Have those loose petals and berries really just sprung off the arrangement? No, of course they haven't; and yet ... And somehow, just for a moment, the whole image flicks from two dimensions to three.
This picture is quietly alive.
Go to see Dianna's work if you can:
7 March The Makers Fair St Augustine's, Stanford Road, Brighton
Weekends in May 'For the Man I Love' Malden Road, Brighton (part of BAOH)
30-31 May The Floral Fringe Fair Leonardslee Gardens
13-14, 20-21, 27-28 June Moth Studios 77 Westcourt Rd, Worthing (part of WAOH)
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