TITLE: Birches

Birches capture winter sunlight.

AUTHOR: Carole Cavanaugh (United States)

I began a dedicated practice in photography in 2020 after a long career as a professor of Japanese culture and cinema. A guiding principle of my work is expressed in the Japanese word miren — a feeling of lingering attachment for a lost time, love, or experience. The medium of photography uniquely conveys the layered emotions of miren — a photograph captures a moment only to remind us it is gone forever. The lens conspires with light and atmosphere to bring something unexpected to the photographic process — an emotionality beneath the contours of the visible. I am a minimalist at heart. I aspire to the balance in the black-and-white compositions of film directors Ozu and Kurosawa. I have also found inspiration in the forms and tonality of ukiyo-e prints, sumi-e drawing, and Nihon-ga genre painting.