If you missed the opening of Still/LIFE, you still have a chance to see the work of photographers Shannon Leith and Pete Starman.
A graduate of The Art Center College of Design, Starman has focused his talents on editorial work, creating images that are dynamic, tense, and charged with the relationships of its players. They are stills from a larger scene, bursting out of the confines of their frame and highlighting the less tangible nuances.
"I'm interested in relationships and how people relate to each other but also how people relate to inanimate objects and their environments, in a word - context." The strength of many of his images lies in his very deliberate cropping, making us question the larger story beyond the still.
Shannon Leith's work is a meditation on the beauty and sanctity of the mundane. A recent Biola University graduate with a BFA in photography, Leith documents her home environment daily and is genuinely absorbed in celebrating life's smallest beautiful moments, and is able to capture them, so that we can too. She makes us all slow down to appreciate the beauty of a kitchen sponge, or colander. Or the pinkness of a straw, or a friend's red hair in the sun on a road trip.
"I am fascinated by the most ordinary things. For me, the everyday stuff of life has the potential to be full of meaning and mystery. These photographs are my way to practice being present. I'd rather rush, but this is how I slow down and actually see what I'm seeing."
Still/LIFE is on view through March 12.
At top, Untitled, Shannon Leith, Below, Untitled, Pete Starman
