Artist Statement
Early in my career, I worked on book projects photographing ancient art treasures in Latin America and Asia, as well as contemporary trance rituals in Haiti and Indonesia. These experiences sensitized me to see patterns of imagery within Nature.
“Drawn from Nature,” is a series of pictures made from patterns found in fossil records and animal tracks to form imagery similar to petroglyphs. The imagery is a meditation on the continuum of natural history, in which our species has had a relatively short, but devastating effect.
My childhood was spent playing in rivers and streams and clear oceans teeming with life. In my 30s, I saw, in four short years, the small Indonesian village I had made my home change over to modern farming techniques: fields once carpeted with fireflies blinked into darkness. I have seen Nature rapidly mutate and decline and future generations may not be able to measure our bounded framework of civilization against the wilder world.
Process Statement
For the work entitled, Drawn from Nature I have created a digital printing process on silver leaf to create a shimmering, seemingly three-dimensional image. The digital prints have a foothold in the 21st Century, and yet have a quality of early photographic processes. The imagery is a meditation on the continuum of natural history, in which our species has had a relatively short, but devastating, effect.
Stuart Rome has worked as a photographer since the 1970’s during which he began exhibiting works in color - both landscapes and portraits, entitled, Modern Mythologies. His first solo exhibition was presented at the International Museum of Photography in 1978.
His interests in anthropology led to projects photographing antiquities in Latin America and Asia as well as recording remnants of these expressions found in the rituals of trance. This documentary work led to landscape photographs of forests as a manifestation of pantheistic energy.
Patterning found in tribal art and textiles became the framework from which ideas about the natural world would emerge in his most recent work, Drawn from Nature.
In 1985 Stuart Rome was hired to start the Photography Program at Drexel University in Philadelphia, where he continues to teach.
Stuart Rome has exhibited extensively over the years in solo and group exhibitions - in galleries and museums. Amongst his publications are: Maya, Treasures of an Ancient Civilization, Abrams, 1985; Forest, a monograph, Nazraeli Press, 2005; Signs and Wonders, The Southeast Museum of Photography, 2011.