At its core, my work mines how we perceive and remember our place in the Natural World: the physical process of eye-to-brain, the abstract route of learning-to-thought, and the self-aware discipline of association-to-analysis. My art is a call to inactive action: to sit, to see, and to acknowledge the accumulation of sensory experience. Pervading the work is a celebration of beauty and its pursuit. No Pollyanna, I insist that contemplated beauty is a necessary luxury in our rapid-fire consumer culture of throw-away imagery, environmental anxieties, financial turmoil and unsettling political discourse.

My structure and content draw inspiration from seventeenth century curiosity cabinets, or wunderkammern, and eighteenth century encyclopedia - both of which juxtapose diverse objects to seek a meaning and a place for everything. Technically, I employ a broad array of nineteenth century photographic methods in homage to that age of primary scientific discovery and system building. I rely on the unfamiliar views afforded by these arcane technologies to attract the eye and to engage recollection.

Alyssa C. Salomon
Providence Forge VA