web exclusive: Umbrella Verbiage
The ubiquitous umbrella. Everyone has at least one. Most of us own several. Its fundamental contradictions are intriguing. We use it to shield ourselves from both rain and from sunshine. We recognize it in either of its two shapes — the cylinder and the partial sphere. If asked to imagine one, most of us would see in our mind’s eye a black umbrella, but our closets probably hold a colored one. For this series of photographs I was interested in using the umbrella’s unmistakable shape and vibrant, saturated color to bring a particular focus and framing to the images. In a few of the photographs, there is a playfulness — something that is hard to avoid when you’re holding an open umbrella for no good reason. In other photographs, the mood is almost as if the umbrella is foreshadowing a tempest.
