STILL (2000 - 2007)

The ocean mesmerizes because it is so utterly impossible to tame; it scoffs at mankind’s pitiful efforts to impose boundaries and property lines on its vast and fluid expanse.  In this series, Bloomfield has nonetheless taken possession of a little piece of the sea, staking her claim through a fixed and very personal point of view. Returning year after year to the same spot, Bloomfield uses the camera’s frame to marry sea and sky in compositions at once descriptive and evocative. Her practice is like the sea itself, balancing repetition and constancy with the magnificent unpredictability that only nature can supply. Working from sundown to sunrise, Bloomfield records the fury of a summer squall or the moonlight as it slips across the waves; the eerily beautiful colors the result of the lengthy exposures these low-lit scenes require.  Her pictures remain resolutely photographic while at the same time evoking more painterly qualities: the terrible beauty of Turner’s sublime and Rothko’s contemplative color fields. In so doing, she approaches the aesthetic condition Minor White termed “spirit,” an intertwining of photographic authenticity and purely subjective experience.

Corey Keller Associate Curator of Photography San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art