Fern L. Nesson, The Shape of Content

A study of abstraction in text-- letters, numbers--, and the use of symbol in photography.

This book has won Davis/Griffin Annual Photobook Awards and was exhibited at the Grifffin Museum of Photography.

Roland Barthes asserts that "a photograph is a witness [to] what has been. Every image is an image of death." But Barthes is wrong. A photograph may speak to a moment now past if that is what is desired. But a photograph can create its own energy as well. Like Cezanne's paintings, it can live; it can breathe.

I use my camera to create life and to defy death. My goal is create living works of art that embody the moment when mass becomes energy. They are never constructed. Everything in them is real.

These images capture a moment of transcendence. In that moment, we know ourselves to be infinite, inextricably a part of the universe. We perceive that, when we die, we will merely change in form. Nothing is ever lost. The energy of those we loved exists forever all around us. And we will too. - F.N

Fern L. Nesson is a fine art photographer, a lawyer and an American historian. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. is a fine art photographer, a lawyer and an American historian. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.