Ruth Dick is a master at capturing the solitary. Almost every image she takes focuses intently on a single object, somehow stimulating a desire to engage in self-reflection. Even her landscapes seem like their sole purpose is to put us in our place. It is not surprising then, when you find out her background is in philosophy and law.

Like O’Keefe, Ruth is able to conjure up form and substance in abstract ways that deftly imbue her images with fresh import. A pepper is not a pepper. It is a beacon of hope and rebirth. Appropriate and much needed for where we are today.

“…what constitutes the fun of shooting remains the same as it it always has to me: to discover the shot, rather than design it. I’m as technical as I need to be (sometimes not!) and I get what I get. Photography is for me a way of communing with, even submitting myself to, the world. I get asked, given many of my images, why I don’t take up painting. Want of time, but also this – what I love about photography is that it can capture the world as it is in that moment.

If a picture, be it a face, a mountain, gradations of colour or repetition of shapes, evokes a feeling, then I’ve succeeded as an artist. What photography is emphatically *not* about for me is dominating my subject. Many do that to powerful effect, and I take my hat off to them. But it’s not what I do, it’s not what I’m interested in doing.”

~ Posted by Mark Walton