These are images made from within giant redwoods and sequoias. The redwoods and sequoias have over their long lives been recurrently struck by lightning, eventually carving out their hard central cores. These mammoth trees, some up to five thousand years old, though hollow, remain alive. I have been photographing from within these trees using the openings as apertures, framing the sky. These works are not meant to be a photographic description or documentation, but instead to act as a catalyst designed to function as a portal from a recognizable world to something original and unexpected.
Publisher of the monograph, Forest - Photographs of Stuart Rome
Signs and Wonders. Photographs by Stuart Rome. Southeast Museum of Photography, 2011. 56 pp., 39 four-color illustrations, 10x10". Publisher's Description Signs and Wonders is a vertical transect through time and through the natural world. Stuart Rome's images condense, flatten and compress the multitude of subtle time signatures that are present in a landscape to construct a complex language of referents and conjunctions. It is evident when we stop and examine these photographs, that beyond these closely observed details from the landscape, there emerges a portrait of the land as a living canvas of marks, gestures and symbols; teeming with an energy and regenerative vitality that is constantly in a state of flux and renewal.
Short documentary by John Thornton, music by Sarah Rome
description of Oculus works purchased for permanent collection
Farewell lecture defining my past 40 years photographing