Blending into the scenery
Photographer Teri Lyn Fisher creates art into which people would happily disappear
By Joanna Beresford 12/03/2009
“I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, and at length the longing has been satisfied.”
Julia Margaret Cameron, Photographer
We don’t see her; we see what she sees. That’s the deal with most photographers, like Julia Margaret Cameron, who was a 19th- century pioneer, particularly for women in the field.
Teri Lynn Fisher, who routinely provides photography for this publication, poses (yeah, I said “poses”) no exception. Her portraiture is really selfless, I think. Her photos are about the people in front of the lens, not the young woman behind it.
But you should see the stuff she posts on her Web sites, shows in galleries and hangs in clients’ homes. Those photos honor their subjects: food, furnishings, flowers, sea creatures, et al. But to me, they almost feel superimposed over this sensibility that is Teri. First of all, she uses a lot of great materials, like wood and iron, and cool rustic objects.
“Props are important,” Teri says. “I love props with food. I love pretty things. I love thrift-store shopping. Almost everything on my walls is from thrift stores — I mean, you can design an entire bedroom for $500 from thrift-store shopping.”
Hence the vintage cookie sheets, patina-rich silver, old table linens, dog-eared books, retro lamps and Chandler-era typewriters featured in her work. Yummy, it’s all delicious. She also makes exquisite flower arrangements, and she likes to include greens and other living materials in her pictures.
Teri grew up in Idaho, where she developed (yeah, I said “developed”) her passion for composition, color and photography. She studied at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, where her proclivity for capturing lifestyle and still life in photographs blossomed. She still goes back to Idaho and is still influenced by the beauty of the natural world there.
“There are a lot of influences for me. I’m most inspired by magazines that show food, by the look of amazing, everyday life — plates in stores, the colors in nature.” She grew up outdoors and that formation invests even her most calculated compositions with an organic power.
Some of my favorite Teri Lyn Fisher images are Polaroids. She started experimenting with the format while in school. See, professional photographers usually shoot a Polaroid version of their picture first so they can check out exposures, focal points, etc. It’s like a preview of the actual photograph — film or digital — that comes from the Polaroid. But Teri liked these “tangible little pictures that come out so nice and neat.” So she’s developed a series of Polaroids that you can explore at shootitdead.com (from the collection’s name: shoot it before it’s dead).
Henri Cartier-Bresson said, “Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.”
Other than memory, I would say — and the reflections of vanished things in the images we keep. Teri’s images capture memories, food, light on water. She says she wants to make viewers feel good when they look at her pictures. She wants to make a scene into which someone would want to happily disappear.
“There are so many things people can be depressed about and these things can take over our lives,” Teri explains. “I wouldn’t call my photos fake happy. But I like to find the stuff that’s simple and nourishing.”
Like crab cakes, daisies, plush cushions, a stack of old books and dawn’s early light on the horizon.
You can also find Teri’s photos at terilynfisher.com and fishfoodblog.com.
Contact Joanna Dehn Beresford at truewrite@yahoo.com
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