Susan Wides

The photographs of Susan Wides convey the experience of not merely being in a place, but of connecting to that place. Wides’ photographs rely deeply on light, space and time in order to dissolve, intensify and filter our visualization of a place. The subtle complexity of her images fuse feeling and thought, requiring us to slow down and contemplate where we are both literally and philosophically. In the mid-90s, Susan Wides shifted away from the museum and culturally loaded views to work more directly in nature and the city. With a 4 x 5-inch view camera, she deepened her experiments with the language of the lens by twisting a movable lens, thereby distorting the camera’s plane of focus to create abstracted images, each with zones of sharp focus. In her series ‘I, Mannahatta’ and ‘I, Kaaterskill’ (1997 – 2013), Wides’s lens explored nuances of perception in our daily lives.