Mat Hennek: Sounds of Spheres Published by Steidl. Text by Hélène Grimaud. Hennek’s gorgeous photography taps into the harmonizing musical resonances of all living things In the atmospheric photographs of Sounds of Spheres, New York– and California-based Mat Hennek (born 1969) creates striking impressions of how we imaginatively engage with nature. Whether depicting the world from a traditional receding perspective (a misty landscape at sunrise, snow-laden branches, palm trees bending in the wind) or from above (the serpentine curves of a river, fossil-like patterns in sand, the churning surface of the ocean), Hennek does not record nature but captures the apparitions it evokes. Through the soft blurring of edges, lyrical color and a focus on pattern, his images move between representation and abstraction, simultaneously capturing and veiling form. The idea of the sphere links subjects that may at first seem unrelated: the glowing ball of the setting sun, the round shapes of ice crystals in a miniature frozen universe, the great globe of the earth upon which all this unfolds.
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