Mariana Cook began this series by making one photograph every day for four years. Ladina Florineth has curated an exhibition of a selection of these images. Cook has written, “Light symbolizes the beginning of life on earth and is first and foremost what inspires me to make photographs.”
The 43 pictures in the exhibition include images of trees, flora, clouds, and artifacts with Cook rendering the familiar abstract. Many of the prints are eleven centimeters in size which emphasizes the intimate spirit with which the images were made.
In his introduction to her book of the same name, the poet Arthur Sze writes, “These photographs make us consider actuality and apparition, being and becoming: the great stillness and motions of the world. By making us focus and see with clarity and intensity, these photographs give us a renewed sense of the miraculous. And where we yearn for what appears to be far away, it is wonderful to realize that the miraculous is in fact, indeed, always, ‘Close at Hand’.”
Selections from the artist’s portfolio of artisan tools recently published by Factum Arte in Madrid is available for view as is Cook’s portrait of Diego Giacometti taken in Paris in 1984.
Mariana Cook : Close at Hand
On view through December 2023
Villa Flor
Somvih 19
7525 S-Chanf, Engadin Switzerland
https://www.villaflor.ch/en/
