Infraterra – A Journey Into the Invisible by Mark White (Website | Facebook | Instagram, see also his previous guest post):
Background
Photography originated as a recording medium. It was designed to create a record of what can be seen in the world around us. To create lasting mementos that will exist long after our living memories have faded. It wasn’t long before artists did what artists do: we learned how to use these tools translate what can be seen into what can be felt. We learned to translate images into emotions. We conceptualized meaning in composition, lighting, and presentation. We understood what was and created something more than.
Like many of us, I picked up my first camera in my early teens. Growing up, I often felt like a forgotten boy in a forgotten city. Photography offered me the escapism I needed to maintain sanity. Intentionally searching for beauty in a place that sometimes felt like its very antithesis helped me gain perspective. Maybe this place was more than, too. Maybe if I just looked a bit harder, there were wonders to be found here.
I spent the better part of my grade school years crawling around the patches of grass in my cement town chasing butterflies with my macro lens. This new-to-me world was both so foreign and so familiar at once. In these microcosms, there was a whole world living within our own. It was in these postage-stamp-sized spaces where I found sanctuary. For a time, I lounged in the spiders’ webs and rode on the backs of aphids. It felt a little bit like magic.
