Brigitte Carnochan was born in Germany in 1941, but quickly moved to the United States in 1946.
Carnochan's artist statement:
People tend to look at photographs too quickly, superficially. They make assumptions of familiarity. I want to slow the viewer down to appreciate in more detail the beauty of the natural world. We see the world in pieces and put it together in our imaginations— a new reality. Each time we look, the fragments reconstitute themselves with subtle differences, a second look nuanced with small changes. In this series, the spaces between the image sections, like the leading in a stained glass window, become an integral part of the composition.
I have printed these photographs with one of the oldest photographic materials— platinum—for its extravagantly long tonal range, depth, and permanence. The warm black, grey, and brown tones of the photographs further abstract the image, making it still easier to reconfigure the pieces and imagine the whole. My subject matter, as always, comes mostly from my own garden— I can wander out of my garage darkroom directly into my garden to sit among the roses, peonies, grasses, dogwood, rhododendrons, and iris while waiting for a fifteen minute platinum exposure— a meditation that is reassuring and inspiring.
The embossed design at the lower right of each photograph combines an image of the camera lens diaphragm and a flower blossom.