Jill Corson – Fine Art Photography Gallery

Notes on SEE THROUGH CITY

Jill Corson remembers the year her vision changed, when every window became a kaleidoscope. An accomplished student of arts administration, German, and print journalism, she couldn't shake the pressing sense that her education—and more importantly, her way of seeing—was incomplete: "I knew then and still know there's more to me, more to you, more to anyone than what's readable on the surface," she states. Walking the streets of Atlanta, New York, San Francisco, Amsterdam or London, the restless Corson found herself peering inquisitively into shops and restaurants, less interested in catching her own reflection than the fragments of people, buildings, cars, and signs that converged in each pane of glass.

Soon, Corson added another prism to these storefront cityscapes: a camera lens, with its own filters of glass and mirror, seemed an apt medium through which to pass her ephemeral visions. Pictures are, as Corson succinctly puts it, "the equivalent of a core sample," where, "layers of different materials, thoughts and beliefs coexist, compressed and presented as one unit." Yet Corson's imagery is more mystical than scientific, or even journalistic. Nothing is presented as fact, but as in transcendental images like Buddha at Bill Hallman and Just Rosy on the Upper East Side, a little philosophy shines.