Photography continues to be my passion and livelihood since the early ‘1970s’.

I feel fortunate to live on Salt Spring Island, west of Vancouver, British Columbia where I specialize in shooting works of art for local artists and galleries.

As a large format film photographer I appreciate high resolution; initially this is why I choose a flatbed scanner for my personal photo explorations.

Nature is my inspiration; I use natural forms, including living ones, to create new relationships, realities, and surreal combinations. All phases of nature interest me: the beauty and perfection of early stages, decay and fade of later ones; and ultimately death, its many aspects the final sacred word.

Organic materials, plants, flowers, nests, feathers, bones, ice, even live insects find their way into my compositions to become part of a story or a metaphor.

Careful attention to placement that will imply gesture along with a revelation of the structural parts of flowers that mirror human physiology, allow plants to take on their own individual personalities. I look for strange juxtapositions while setting up, sometimes reconstructing or reassembling parts to create hybrids, reminding myself that “accidents” can turn into opportunities.

While nature unfolds, wilts, interacts and melts, the scanner’s myopic lens and light source passes by, converting what it sees to digital information, allowing witness to this passing moment of time. Sometimes living insects move causing an colorful

digital track to be imaged, an artifact of their trail and structure. That is the gift, the unpredictable part left to chance and timing, one of the unique effects of scanner imaging that fascinates me. The piece entitled “Orb Weavers” traces the movement of over 300 tiny spiderlings as they entomb a withering flower. It took them only an hour to construct a dense web binding the flower to the scanner’s glass, while I watched spellbound and gently wrangled the runaways.

For me a successful image has a magical or mysterious quality but also stirs people up. My underlying intention is to provoke an emotional response or elicit questions about familiar notions of beauty, sensuality, relationship and form.

In 2007 my work won international recognition in the Pilsner Urquell International Photography Awards (www.photoawards.com). “Incognito” took first place for Professional Photographers (nature category “flowers”).

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All Images Copyright
© 2008 et 2011, Janet Dwyer
All rights reserved worldwide.