Penny Chase Prior | Next Portfolio Statement Index Contact Statement My photographs are abstract details of the New England coast, urban structures, and still lifes. They are grounded in recognizable objects and explore these objects in time and space. Each image is almost a portrait, revealing the individuality of weathered rocks, dead trees, and decaying walls. This individuality is a product of time, as the elements erode granite, smooth wood, and weather paint. These images also remind us of the ephemeral nature of the world around us: a patch of snow will melt, a conjunction of rocks will be swept away in a winter storm, a wall will be repainted.    Above all, I am concerned with the abstract beauty to be found in the world around us. Through the choice of viewpoint and the manipulation of perspective through camera movements, I create images with ambiguous spaces in which the emotive content relies on line, shape, texture, tone, and, above all light. Light transforms ordinary, easily over-looked fragments into small universes of glowing textures and radiant detail nearly invisible to the naked eye. In the darkroom, the silver etched by this light is further transformed into a print of harmonious silver tones that is itself a “light event.”