July 2014
Artist’s Statement
We are all drawn to water: to drink, to swim, to sail or paddle a boat, to dangle our feet in a stream, to splash in a fountain or backyard sprinkler. Water carries some of our strongest memories and desires: the sound of rain on a porch roof, the crash of ocean waves during summers at the beach, the desire for travel or for home. Our very bodies are mostly composed of water, mixed with a touch of salt. I have chosen these photographs to celebrate some of the most beautiful and watery places I remember: the Atchafalaya swamp, the beaches and marshes of the Georgia coast, and a rain-drenched hike at Connemara in Flat Rock, NC.
Biography
I have been taking photos since the 1980s when I inherited my first Canon SLR, a cast-off from my father. I am self-taught, but have learned from looking at great photography since childhood, beginning with a well-worn copy of The Family of Man on my parents’ bookshelves. My love of photography has always been closely tied to my love of travel and observing other places and the people who live there, beginning with photos I took in the 1980s with that first camera – of Nicaragua and Burkina Faso, and the revolutionary changes transforming those countries at the time. Since then I have traveled in Cuba, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, France, Spain, Italy, Quebec, Costa Rica, and Puerto Rico. But I have also fallen in love with the fascinating regions lying within our own borders: New England, New Mexico, and, closer to home, Louisiana and the gulf coast region of Florida near Apalachicola.
My photos have appeared in several books, and in LensWork and South x Southeast online photomagazines. I have exhibited at the Arts Clayton Gallery; the Norton Arts Center (in Hapeville, GA, where I live); Oakland Cemetery; and other events during the past several years of Atlanta Celebrates Photography month. I moved to Atlanta in 1989 from Maryland, live in Hapeville with my husband and cat, and work in the clinical laboratory at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mpuziss
