Coriolana Simon has won acclaim for her still life photography, which re-interprets 17th century Dutch still life paintings. Douglas Wolters is known for his award-winning “transformation” abstracts. The two also share a passion for macro photography, particularly of the botanical world. Their individual specialties combined with their shared vision have given rise to a joint expression in TimePoints Photography.
With a busy professional life as a musician, Doug Wolters performs in the mid-Atlantic region on cello, baroque cello, viola da gamba (a “cousin” to the cello), and the medieval vielle. As a musician, he brings a somewhat unusual set of perceptions to his vision in photography. Line, rhythm, harmony, and structure in music find their counterparts naturally in images. Wolters notes that he is particularly drawn to the richness of color and to the endless variations of design that occur both in nature and in the built environment. For his “transformations,” Wolters may take a simple sunset or cloud formation and turn them into boldly colored abstract designs that look more “graphic” than “photographic.”
Trained as an architect, but also a writer and musician, Coriolana Simon feels the influence of these disciplines in her photography. While she enjoys the magic of macro photography, which can open windows for her into a different visual universe, she remains primarily focused on still lifes. She has long admired the still life paintings by Dutch artists of the 17th century. Not only do they give a detailed view of Dutch culture but many were painted in a style as realistic as photographs. While never copying a painting, Simon re-interprets the original themes with her camera and applies classic composition and lighting techniques to arrangements of her historic objects. To give depth to the undertaking, Simon has studied hundreds of paintings and read extensively on Dutch cultural, political, economic, social, religious, and military history.