With all of her effects created in-camera using the refraction of light and movement in different depths of water, Christy Lee Rogers creates pictures that look like Baroque paintings without the help of Photoshop. Her obsession with water as a medium coupled with her dedication to photography as an artistic medium, makes her work truly stand out.
Her subjects are wrapped in fabric, bathing in darkness. The water allows the bodies and fabric to move slowly and fluidly. Rogers shoots in swimming pools at night and her sessions can last two to four hours. The night's natural darkness helps her achieve the black background she needs to surround her subjects in.
In this latest collection she calls Odyssey, Rogers explores such grand themes as birth, life and death. “The story of Odyssey exists in clumps of ideas and energy, griping emotions and the simplicity of truth beyond words,” she explains to us. “Like Homer's epic Odyssey, life is an exciting and tumultuous adventure filled with thrilling characters to meet along the way. But metaphorically, Odyssey is a much bigger story than that, where the attributes and abilities of mankind soar to an unseen, indescribable level.”
More than anything, Rogers wanted to impart a sense of wonder and tranquility, to provide a bit of solace from our hectic, everyday lives. In addition she says, “The work of an artist lies in manifesting their inner world externally, so you are also experiencing my quest for the answers to life and the knowledge that's contained in and around it.”
Photo credit: Christy Lee Rogers
