Synkroniciti is thrilled to welcome photographer and writer Julia L Offen of California with two beautiful images with a nod to geometry, both natural and architectural. Circular Stairs, which won our cover competition, is a black and white digital image extracted from color photography featuring Julia’s nieces taken during a visit to the William Jefferson Clinton Building in Washington, D.C. by her sister-in-law, the photographer Chie Sakakibara (shared with full permission). Julia cropped and shaped the image to focus on the marvelous spiral staircase. Our eyes slide down the banisters and up the chain suspending the lighting in the space and vice versa, creating a powerful and fluid sense of motion. The shape echoes the golden spiral, in this case modified and quirked just slightly, creating a playful counter motion that seems to bank and turn as the eye skitters over steps. The lighting and the floor decoration echo a star motif and the angle of the shot creates the shape of an eye.
The second image, Succulents, is a color photograph of a mass of garden succulents, enhanced digitally so that the outer leaves are framed in hot pink and the highlights glow bright green. It’s a celebration of the mathematics of growing things, each whorl of leaves so vibrant that it seems to leap off the digital page. We think of stars and abundance, all crowded together in the excitement of being alive.
View Julia’s captivating and playful photography in Synkroniciti’s “Patterns” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Julia L Offen is a writer, anthropologist, editor, and fine art photographer living in beautiful coastal California after decades spent trotting across North America and Europe. Horses were often involved. Her creative prose has been published in both literary and academic journals, but this is the first time she’s ever submitted her digital art anywhere.
Before she became an academic (and then shook off that mantle), she earned an M.F.A. from the University of California, Irvine. She spent two years with her dog living and working with traveling circuses in Europe, which may perhaps raise more questions than it answers.