Michael Wolfe, The Better Angels of Our Nature (BLACK & WHITE 2020)

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” Abraham Lincoln While photographing grain silos in the Wimmera on a still, cloudless winter’s day I went searching for my great grand-parents last resting place. I became struck by the moving elegiac memorial sculptures – and particularly angels. Once involved, I couldn’t let it rest, the more I searched and photographed, the more response I felt, until I found the forms singing to me with the power of great music. It was an uplifting experience, rare and beautiful. But merely to photograph these memorials seemed to ignore a deeper possibility – could I find a new dimension manifested in the intricate power of the gesture and look removed from religious meaning and symbol. Then it became a challenge of how far I could push and extend the visual language, how to abstract the forms while suggesting an emotional, sensual narrative.

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