Rebecca Norris Webb

In this series, Aperture Foundation works with the world’s top photographers to distill their creative approaches, teachings, and insights on photography—offering the workshop experience in a book. Our goal is to inspire photographers of all levels who wish to improve their work, as well as readers interested in deepening their understanding of the art of photography. Each volume is introduced by a well-known student of the featured photographer. In this book, internationally acclaimed color photographers Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, offer their expert insight into street photography and the poetic image. Through words and photographs—their own and others’—they invite the reader into the heart of their artistic processes. They share their thoughts about a wide range of practical and philosophical issues, from questions about seeing and being in the world with a camera, to how to shape a complete body of work in a way that’s both structured and intuitive.

A photographic meditation on the elasticity of pandemic time The latest body of work from American photographer Sandra Cattaneo Adorno (born 1954) offers a meditation on perception: how we experience time, memory, connection and the boundaries between reality and illusion. “Reflection, refractions and distortions abound, transforming the external world into a metaphor of the mind,” Cattaneo Adorno explains. Inspired by the memory of brightly colored, overlapping metal plates on a printing press, known as scarti (scraps), Cattaneo Adorno revisited her archives and began layering images during the pandemic. Scarti di Tempo can mean either “time discrepancy” or “lag time,” serving as a metaphor for how time—like waves of light or sound—can expand or contract. In much the same way, these photographs occasionally dissolve into abstraction while remaining tethered to reality. The book also contains a QR code that links to a score composed by the artist's husband, which provides an opportunity to experience the harmony of image and sound.