Melina Hammer

Imagine a richly-hued world - transcendent, yet achingly familiar.

An alone space, eerily poignant in its singularity.

Provocative, decomposing majesties haunting one's mind, unsettling in their full emptiness.

Penetrating "interior" worlds, defined by familiar, neglected forms...

They are shamefully intimate to me.

Imbued with an earnest, broken magnificence, these spaces are valiant testimonies to perseverance.

Urban ruins: visceral, elegant, transcendent.

Capturing the "feeling" of life lived is my challenge, my inspiration. I am beholden to duality of being, to an abandoned, eviscerated life that is simultaneously abundant, thriving. These polarized fragments serve as subliminal "source material" as I shoot my images.

Intuition has integrity; I trust mine to capture the essence of my fascination. I see power - visual and symbolic - in the shapes of shadows and light: what they conjure and evoke, as well as what they describe and disguise. Magic exists in the variance and dimension of texture, and the vivid spectacle of color. Society's disregard provides me opportunity to explore broken pasts, as well as the realm of new "growth" that results from such deterioration. These pieces firmly root themselves in what experience feels like.