Inner « O' Canada

Virginia Mak, On One’s Own #9

Soft-focus photography might appear easy to execute but doing it well and in a way that conveys feeling and meaning in the image is quite difficult. In her photos Toronto photographer Virginia Mak skillfully uses this technique to give her images a distinctly moody and ethereal effect that is more evocative of painting. In contrast to photographs rendered in sharp relief, viewers of Mak’s carefully blurred images are able to contemplate various possibilities of meaning and emotion suggested by her elegant minimalist compositions. The sampling shown here conjures up feelings of serenity, mystery, vulnerability, desire, longing and wistfulness.

Mak is represented by Toronto’s Bau-Xi Gallery and Calgary’s Newzones Gallery and more of her exquisite images can be seen on the sites for each of these galleries.