Flora

From 1980 to 2001, the overwhelming majority of Stephen Strom’s work comprised interpretations of landscapes, aimed at evoking in the viewer a desire to explore the multiple rhythms — temporal, chromatic, and sculptural — manifest in the images. Throughout that period, Stephen recorded images on color transparencies. In 2002, acquisition of a digital camera provided Stephen with a tool whose sensitivity and versatility enabled him to bring the sensibilities that inform his landscapes to a highly kinetic macroworld. These images, which evolved during the period between 2002 and 2008 are at once recordings of the interplay of light, color and form, and the delicacy and sensuality of desert flora: the translucent white of prickle poppies; the silky white of primroses and mariposa lilies, the yellow-white of yucca blossoms; seductive purple-white daturas. Complementing these floral images are records of the transformations of color and shape wrought by the natural evolution of agaves, as well as the sudden transformation effected by a desert wildfire