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Photograph by Uli Rose.
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At this blog, I’m usually focused on commercial photography and how and why it connects with art buyers and clients, but I thought it would be nice to look at a different scenario: why someone chooses an image to own and display in their home. The architect Wesley Wolfe, of Morris Adjmi Architects, bought the above photograph—taken by our own Uli Rose—for his New York City apartment. I emailed him to find out what he drew him to the image. Here’s what he wrote back:
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“I have that image hanging in my bedroom. I chose it for my apartment and may do another of his for my house upstate. There were several aspects I liked: I wanted a calm, soothing, natural image for the bedroom. I have a gray accent wall in the room that works nicely with the colors of this image. I always have been attracted to misty, foggy images. Also the photo is taken in the Hudson River Valley area which is where I am building a weekend house. I thought it would be nice to have a reminder of that landscape in the city apartment.”
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Then I emailed Uli and asked him for the story of the photo. Here’s his thoughtful response, contained in an email he titled “The Old Oak”:
“This photograph shows an old oak tree at the end of my road. I have taken pictures of this tree again and again. I pass it every day on my way to the store to get the papers so I look at it all the time, anytime of the day or year or season. There is something fascinating about these old-timers. You always see them in a field where the farmer did not mind to go around them to plant his corn, or by the side of a country road like this one or shading some old farmhouse like a good companion. They are old, sturdy, majestic and you wonder what they have seen and endured and what the world looked like when they were little. People instinctively flock to them and get upset when one has to be cut down.
And it seems we don’t have that kind of a relationship with a pine tree. But this is only one of the elements here that come into play with this picture, the others being the field itself, the early morning fog and the early morning light, you can feel the cold fall day and how it seems to shape up to be a pretty one. Any of these things have their own resonances and connections and it takes one look and you get it, you know: picture-thousand words-that thing. I love it when the triangle of subject-camera-onlooker comes together because it is then when you know you have done your job.
I am very pleased and honored that Wes choose this picture for his wall because it means that it resonated with him. And that is all anybody can hope for.”
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Thank you, Wes and Uli.
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