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Ligustrum
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IN SEARCH OF EDEN (1999- present )
New work in progress. In November, 1998 Clark moved to a small Mississippi
coastal town 45 minutes from New Orleans. This move has brought her work
full circle and back to the landscape of her native South. In this
series of photographs, Clark explores the remarkable coastlines of the
Gulf of Mexico. The regions surrounding the Gulf, from the Keys of
Florida through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Mexico, and Cuba
have been a drawing card for European explorers in search of The
Fountain of Youth and fabled Cities of Gold. These regions with
lush, humid and sensual landscapes have attracted writers,
artists, and naturalists to it's shores in search of visions of
paradise. It is a place unmistakably marked with a spirit of it's
own. The portfolio consists of landscapes, seascapes, flora and
fauna, architectural and historical sights which document the visual,
aesthetic, and atmospheric dimensions of this unique region.
Edition of 50
Price range: "550.-$5,000.
Size available: 16" x 20", 20" x 24", 30" x 40"
14" x 14", 17" x 17", 25" x 25"
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Metairie Cemetery
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ELYSIUM , A GATHERING OF SOULS, NEW ORLEANS
CEMETERIES (1995-1997)
In poet and writer, Andrei Codrescu's foreword for the book "Elysium" he discusses
Clark's approach as; "Sandra Russell Clark views our Elysium from a double
perspective. One is romantic, dramatic, stormy, and resembles that
of Clarence John Laughlin, the poet and photographer who tried to make his
camera penetrate the very veil of death. Clark does not have the same
transcendental ambitions, she photographs the statuary as if it holds an
occult key. She is persuaded by the drama inherent in stone and weather.
Laughlin sometimes dressed up funeraria with the bodies of the living,
pushing the marble to speak his own romantic text. Clark lets the
tombs tell their own story but her view resembles Laughlin's in her
faith that eternity is serious business. The view from this perspective is
respectful and in a Pre-Raphaelite sense, beautiful."
"Clark's second perspective leads her also to view the mystery of forms without
comment. Time scrambles the signs: what we see is the formal interaction
of elements in which the original intentions can no longer be read. The
passage of time fascinates her, and she photographs it as if it were the
work of a great artist--which, of course, it is. Her subject is often
the abstract content of Time's work, and from that she wrenches her melancholy
and mysterious pictures."
Edition of 50
Price range: $550.-$5,000.
Size available: 16" x 20", 20" x 24", 30"x 40"
*for information on standard and special slip cased edition books or the
traveling exhibition, click here.
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Canale della Guidecca
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VENICE A VANISHING LIGHT
(1992-1993)
Art historian, Edward Lucie-Smith observes, "If there is one city in the
United States which bears a subtle and elusive resemblance to Venice, it
is New Orleans. Both cities have a patina of age plus a singularity
of style which marks them out as being different and both are living on borrowed
time. I think it is no accident that New Orleans photographer Sandra Russell
Clark was drawn to Venice. Clark's photographs taken on San Michele, might
easily have been made in one of the great cemeteries of New Orleans. What
Clark brings to Venice is aspects of 19th Century culture, an accumulation
of experiences and perceptions which are colored by her experience of the
culture of the American South, that of New Orleans in particular.
Russell-Clark's aesthetic approach is closely linked to that of the great
master photographer of Louisiana architecture and landscape, Clarence John
Laughlin. Her work is a special aspect of Symbolism. The photographer
engages us as spectators, to think of the pictorialist heritage but she also
wants us to think about the differences between the original pictorialist
epoch and our own. This gap in sensibility is distinctively a product
of our own time and gives the photographs a special air of alienation, an
alluring strangeness."
Edition: 50
Price range: $550.-5,000.
Sizes available: 16" x 20", 20" x 24", 30" x 40"
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Gamberaia, Italy
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GARDENS
OF REFLECTION (1985-1989)
Sandra Russell Clark is best known for her images of gardens and ethereal
landscapes. Her powerful scenes depicting topiary gardens and natural
landscapes reveal an essential vision of life that is ordinarily hidden from
view. Clark's use of infrared film and delicate coloration brings a
surrealistic quality to her prints, a dreamy counterpoint to the way she
precisely composes her images.
"The Surrealists called this isolation of subject from normal surroundings
depaysement or removal from the natural sphere. They used the technique,
as does Russell Clark, to heighten expressiveness and underscore the importance
of intuition and the subconscious. We feel a sense of deja vu as we
wander through these surreal avenues, an unnamed longing for another time
and place in which paradise was still ours". ( Nancy Barrett, former
Curator of Photographs, New Orleans Museum of Art)
In 1989 Ms. Clark's "Gardens of Reflection" series was selected to represent
the Houston Fotofest at the Torino Fotografia Biennalle Internationale
in Torino, Italy.
Included in the portfolio are gardens from Italy, France, England, Spain,
and the U.S.
Edition: 50
Price range: $550.-5,000.
Sizes available: 16" x 20", 20" x 24", 30" x 40"
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*If you are a gallery or a curator and would like to see more images from
the above series or original prints, please email:
sandrarclark@bellsouth.net
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