David Stephenson – Celestial Images of Domes
There’s an ethereal magic to standing beneath a dome, neck craned, looking up at these celestial, sumptuously detailed cupolas. Traveling from Italy to Spain, Turkey, England, Germany, and Russia, among other countries, American photographer, David Stephenson, took pictures of churches, palaces, mosques, and synagogues from the second to the early twentieth century. He studied at the University of Colorado and then the University of New Mexico. He moved to Australia to take up a position teaching photography at the University of Tasmania, where he completed a PhD in Fine Art. In this series, images of naves, crossings, apses and choirs are combined into diptychs and triptychs to create anthropomorphic designs and kaleidoscopic images of dome interiors. Using long exposures, Stephenson continues to explore notions of the sublime in architecture.
