Beauty Lain Bare
Photography by Michelle Babii
Words by Edna St. Vincent Millay
On exhibit at The Small Gallery, Shengri La from August 14 – September 28
Artist Opening 7 PM SLT, Thursday August 14
Artist’s Statement: Of all the visual wonders in both Real Life and Second Life, I have always found great beauty in stark and simple images; scenes that are not complicated yet have just enough detail to evoke a strong feeling. While I am looking at different scenes, I tend to gravitate to images that create feelings of loneliness and sadness, a certain quiet and pensive mood, and even to those that invite a bit of uneasiness.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, a famous American poet well known for her sonnets, had created quite a reputation as an outspoken, unconventional, austere, and even grim writer. In my mind, her stark emotional words seemed a match for the simple beauty I found in Silent. Pairing phrases by ESVM with each photograph seemed to be unfair to direct the viewer toward a particular story or mood rather than letting them come to their own conclusion. But then again, as we don’t respond the same way to visual cues, we may not interject the same emotion into the written word.
I understand the images will be a departure from the vividness, details, and color of Windlight but that is exactly my intention. A laying bare of beauty, if you will, devoid of the accoutrement offered to us by Photoshop and Windlight. The only tweaking was to cause the sky to be a shade of white in order to enhance the black and white quality in some of the photos. All photos were taken in the black and white sim called Silent. Any colored textures seen in the photos are what occur in the sim and are not post production additions.
Michelle Babii is a well-known and accomplished SL photographer, who has specialized in unretouched SL images. She is also co-owner of the Manzanillo Artists’ Enclave.
Shenlei Winkler 