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Blissfully Lyrical Photos Capture Swimmers Frozen in Movement

Christy Lee Rogers’ aqueous photography never appears waterlogged.
Images courtesy the artist

Amidst vibrant swatches of color, a swarm of floating women form elegiac shapes under the water. In her series, A Quarter of a Million of Miles, photographer Christy Lee Rogers captures her subjects flanked on all sides by rushing waves. Her subjects are rendered in a state of anonymity, their faces masked by bubbles and movement. As Rogers lays beneath the boundaries of the pool or body of water, she positions herself in the exact spot to capture a flailing limb or waving strain fabric emitting from unfamiliar forms.

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Faceless figures fill each photograph, colliding with each in embraces of affection and clashes of angst—it’s not entirely clear which. Other times, the human aspect of the series is more obvious. A distinct limb juts out, grounding the piece in the corporeal. Throughout the series, Rogers shifts her preference for creating realistic photographs with a distorted edge, to crafting wholehearted, living Impressionistic works.

In 2013The Independent previously described Rogers’ works as full of  “ethereal payoff […] indeed redolent of a mix of Masters—the vivid hues of Titian, the straining bodies of Rubens, the sun-dappling chiaroscuro of Caravaggio.”

The photographer shares the fact that she refrains from using Photoshop when creating her series, choosing instead the ephemerality of "the moment." Light refraction is the main source of image of manipulation, and she describes a "fragile process of experimentation" to achieve the most unfiltered yet surreal view.

See more from Christy Lee Rogers and her series A Quarter of a Million Miles on her website, here.

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