Emma Livingston
SPHAERA
“Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour and is not reminded of the flux of all things?”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
''My interest in water and concern for the well-being of our seas, oceans, rivers and lakes has been growing over the last few years. It has now become common knowledge that our oceans are under serious threat from pollution. Our relationship with nature remains ambivalent. We love it but we are not capable of taking care of it. We once believed nature as infinite, yet now it has become tangibly finite.
For this series, I focus and scan the surface of the water until I come across the next image I wish to capture. Doing this, I am mesmerized by the constant and subtle changes in light, texture, lines, patterns and colours of the water as the wind brushes its surface, or the sun hides behind a cloud.
I have chosen to represent these images in a circle within a square for the symbolic value of these two universal shapes. In this case, the square represents the “earthly” - that which in some ways “limits” the divine. It symbolizes the four corners of the earth or the four cardinal points. The circle on the other hand, takes us beyond: it suggests a moon or another planet or maybe our own as seen from space. The circle is also symbolic of the wheel, something in constant movement as are the sea and the passing of time. Or the number zero. An embryo. Pure potential in the making.
I have always been interested in the symbols and polarities within nature, of the before and after of a landscape, and how this resonates within us. In the Sphaera series - where the element of water is the protagonist - I am interested in creating a tension between the polarities symbolized by the circle and the square: such as the divine versus the human, light versus dark, the infinite versus the finite, movement versus static, the universal versus the individual, the macrocosm versus the microcosm and so on.
One may wonder: “Am I looking through a telescope at a starry sky or is this an image through a microscope? Or ‘Is it the porthole view onto the sea?” With this series of ambiguous images, I am interested in creating a space for contemplation and wonder, a space to pause and reflect, a space to question our relationship with water and world as a whole.''
“There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature - the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.” ― Rachel Carson
Emma Livingston is a British Argentine artist photographer based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her work has been in solo and group exhibitions in galleries, cultural centers and museums in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, the United States, France and Germany. Her photographs have been published in various international magazines including European Photograph, NextLevel, Lensculture and Loupe. She has won first prizes in the London Photographic Association and Px3 competitions, as well as been nominated a Discovery of the FOTOFEST Meeting Place and a PDN 30 Photographer to Watch in 2010 and 2009 respectively. She has been on a one month residency at the Vermont Studio Center in November 2017.