Featured Artist Denise Solay

Denise Solay takes photographs of walls that evoke the culture, history and character of cities around the world. View more of her images by visiting her website.

 

 

As a jewelry designer and travel photographer, I roam the world looking for unique pieces of history. One morning in Marrakech I was out for a walk, lamenting about how few of the younger Moroccan men I came across were wearing traditional djellabas. They were wearing jeans and t-shirts and talking on their mobile phones.

 

 

How was I going to be able to capture the visual richness of this ancient culture—the history, the traditions—if they are evolving so fast?

 

 

Then I realized that I was standing next to a most interesting, visually evocative, piece of history—the walls of this beautiful, old city.

 

 

Since that morning’s awakening, I have photographed walls throughout Morocco, Mexico, Myanmar, India, Argentina and Chile, as well as here in New York City in Brooklyn and aboard the historic fire boat John J. Harvey in New York harbor.

 

 

The photographs of these walls are like abstract impressionist paintings, but with a much deeper message, of a different culture, a different environment and a different moment in time. Each tells a story about the history, about the culture, about the people and about beauty.

 

 

These images of weathered walls that give us comfort and shelter from the outside world, crumbling under the weight of time, reveal beauty in their worn surfaces. Sometimes I find layers of disintegrating printed posters and graffiti on the walls, hinting at all the generations of people that have left their mark on their surfaces.

 

 

I digitally edit the edges of the frame, to add additional energy to the image and to remind us that this surface will eventually disappear along with the history it represents. Not only do these walls tell a story of their rich history, they just look beautiful.

 

 

Recently, I came across exciting black and white photos by Aaron Siskind. I was fascinated. He was shooting photos of walls long before I ever looked through a viewfinder. I have always loved abstract impressionist art, but believed it was purely a painted medium; photography was for capturing the “real world.”

 

 

Little did I know, as a quote from The Aaron Siskind Foundation’s site states:

Siskind turned the medium of photography on its head, taking pictures of found objects that were simultaneously true-to-life and abstract… he was one of the first photographers to combine what was known as ‘straight’ photography (recording the real world as the lens ‘sees’ it) with abstraction.

 

 

It’s nice to know that my photos of walls have a provenance recognized by one of the world’s great artists.

 

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