Known for his use of different artistic disciplines from jewelry and sculpture to photography and thematic installation, Stephen J. Albair talks about Untitled, a piece from his exhibition Hidden Gardens-Private Views.
Technique: Set-up photography, using natural light.
Medium: 35mm film photography
What’s your inspiration?
The objects and backgrounds used to create this work. Each object is like a player on a stage. Ideas begin as themes from an autobiographical perspective or from my everyday experiences. I build stories around a central theme. Vivid color, or the absence of it, creates emotionally charged images that reveal and conceal information in a new context.
What’s the story here?
Liam Passmore, in an introduction written for my book, suggests that its meaning is “innocence lost” and transmuted into something else. I reworked the background photograph, adding details and the children which are a figurine from the early 1900s. When I thought about the uncertainty of our times and considered the multitude of Gardens, my life as a twin, all the parts fit seamlessly together.
In your exhibition statement, you said, “you enter a garden to leave a garden.” What do you mean?
Because of what is gotten and what is left behind in our continuous process of evolving in a changing world. Gardens are political spaces, restricted and conflicted, inclusive and exclusive, serene and threatening. You can find yourself or lose yourself. We leave one comfort zone to find another in hopeful anticipation of moving onward.
