The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.
Today’s featured artist: Suzanne Saroff
‘‘Perspective’ is a two-part series. The original photos I titled “Perspective.” Then I titled the photos that came after “Perspective Revisited.”
These pieces were a deeply personal experience for me to create. Creating my artwork is a transformative, meditative experience. That was especially so in creating my Perspective series. I was in my early twenties when I started this series. I had been working on other still-life photography series involving these props – the glassware, the fruits, and the flowers – but that earlier series was about the shadows they made. While photographing that earlier series, I saw that the orange I had been photographing had taken a completely new shape behind the water glass. This phenomenon in art – distortion through lenses of all types, even when the lens is not attached to the camera – has always interested me. From Irving Penn’s work on the concept, to my carrying around a crystal ball when I was a kid, photographing my hand holding the crystal while the world flipped upside down behind it.
At that moment, seeing the distorted orange at an unexpected angle brought me back to my childhood, where photography was a discovery of the hidden obvious. Right then, I became obsessed, which turned into a journey of exploration that has led me deeper into what I can try to capture and communicate with my photography.
Something so simple – water, a background, and an object- being transformed with the right light and “Perspective.”
The second part of this series was revisiting what I had started. In this second part of the Perspective series, I dove deeper into the folds and dimensions of communicating with color and texture. I hope that these captured images share some of the ripeness of emotion and feeling that I had then, and how what I was able to see helped to unravel tangled knots that are so common in all of us.
Through the years, I continue to revisit this work, each time with a new perspective. As I have grown up in this career in New York, I find comfort in the feeling of the challenge of discovering something new in the obvious. I chase that feeling, obsessively working through new ideas. As I balance my commercial projects with my own personal work, I have continued to revisit this “Perspective” concept, as each visit brings me joy and comfort, and the most exciting visits do bring me something new.
To see more of this project, click here
Artist Bio
Suzanne Saroff is a photographer and video artist based in NYC. Her body of work is still-life focused, with a multimedia approach. She has always been an observer – noticing small details. As a child, this meant falling behind on hikes to look at unnoticed bugs and flowers, and as an adult, she continues to notice the often unseen. She uses still-life photography as a way to communicate feelings and ideas. Her work is feminine, bold, and nuanced. She loves to explore objects, textures, and colors and how they can add layers of energy and meaning.
Central to her approach is experimentation and new ways to work with light and composition. In her studio, she likes to build technical sets and then break all of the creative “rules”. This process is cathartic and is where new ideas emerge. She likes to examine, take apart, or combine flowers and objects, searching for new ways of looking at them to create and communicate feelings and emotions.
In addition to her ever growing body of personal work, Suzanne has shot for many clients, including Glossier, Gucci, NARS, Prada, and her photography has been published in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, and many other publications.
APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades. After establishing the art-buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. Follow her at @SuzanneSease. Instagram