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- Early Light 1
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- Early Light 2
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- Early Light 3
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- Early Light 5
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Janet Smith
Early Light
I save things “just in case”, and so began this project with a collection of scraps of paper and early morning light. Landscape photographers chase the light outside; I chased the light that came into my house through widows and doorways. During this project, I became a student of light, shadows and time.
I had to work quickly to catch the light. I cut, folded, and curled pieces of black and white paper and placed them in the light to see what shapes and patterns would emerge. I was surprised that the shadows made with black and white paper changed so much on different backgrounds. I experimented to see how many different shadows I could make with one piece of paper.
As the light came into my house, I moved as it moved until I ran into walls and ran out of light. I realized that while I was chasing the light, I was also chasing time.
Artist Bio
Janet Smith is a photographer based in Arlington MA who enjoys photographing things that do not run away and occasionally things that do. She is a student of natural light and believes that almost anything can be visually interesting given the right light and perspective.
In her early photographic career, she learned techniques in landscape and nature photography in field workshops with Art Wolfe and David Middleton. She also studied black and white photography for a year at Harvard University with Christopher James. Her participation in master classes at the Maine Media Workshops with Lilo Raymond, Olivia Parker, and Sam Abell helped her develop a personal style with still life photography.
She has had one-person shows at the Newton Free Library, the Cary Memorial Library in Lexington, MA and the Gutman Library at Harvard University. Her photographs have won awards in national shows at the Griffin Museum of Photography and have been accepted in juried shows at the Cambridge Art Association, the Concord Art Association, and the Rocky Neck Art Colony in Gloucester, MA.
Her photographs are included in the permanent collection at Children’s Hospital in Boston, MA and in private collections in the United States and abroad.
Contact Janet Smith