Concealment and Form: A Study in Monochrome
It begins with refusal, with a quiet act of resistance. Not everything has to be given away. What is hidden becomes just as powerful as what is shown, and the strength comes from restraint.
From there the series fractures. Branches tangled together, messy but deliberate, echoing the vertical lift of arms. Fabric pressed into skin until it leaves an impression, turning softness into something sculptural. A flower folding in on itself, petals breaking away, beauty collapsing yet still magnetic.
Then the eye appears. Narrowed, framed by fingers, vision not surrendered but restricted and distilled into a single point. The sequence closes with dust scattered across white ground, fragments hanging between stillness and motion, as if permanence and impermanence carry equal weight.
What makes this work resonate is the space it leaves open. Each image gives just enough, holding back to let imagination do the rest. The concealed face asks the viewer to find themselves in the absence. The texture of fabric against skin makes us almost feel the pressure. The broken flower shifts the idea of loss into transformation. This is the balance, the real and the possible. Gloves, skin, petals, dust, all ordinary, yet arranged in a way that builds meaning beyond the surface. Gesture becomes language. Fragments become narrative. The photograph becomes more than what it shows.
The rhythm is what ties it together. From concealment to tangle, from touch to collapse, from vision to dust. Each move feels inevitable, natural, but together they reach past documentation. They lean into the edges of reality, where the real begins to slip into memory, dream, or invention.
That is where the work stays alive. It is not only about what is seen, but about what might be, what could be, what sits just out of reach yet still felt.
- Eli Samuel.
