Philippe Cheng

Photographer, Phillippe Cheng, interprets the landscapes of Long Island as soft, colorful abstractions, rejecting precision and detail in favor of color and emotion. Cheng seeks to communicate the emotion inspired by a type of place rather than document a particular location, Cheng deliberately shifts the focus plane to blur and distort the image until the landscape is reduced to soft washes of color. In doing so he encourages viewers to slow down and consider what they are looking at and explore their personal associations with the suggested environment. Cheng asserts that for him, ‘it’s about pacing and putting in place a visual pause, which would engage the viewer, hopefully, and open up another kind of avenue of thought. Maybe not knowing exactly what a place was or exactly what you’re looking at would force you to try to identify that, and by that very nature of that process, you’d slow down.’