IN-SIGHT offers captivating view of ocean life by Hawaii photographer
Kaua‘i, Hawaii, November 15, 2007 – Kaua‘i photographer Bruna Stude’s IN-SIGHT is a little black art book full of gorgeous ocean imagery, and it comes to bookstores at the end of November.
The author, who spent most of her life working and living at sea, summarizes the ocean world with just a few paragraphs in her photography book, allowing the reader to follow her story through the imagery via intriguing image titles and creative groupings. In sum, the book truly tells a story about Stude’s journey and the environs she loves.
“When I photograph in the ocean, I look to find and capture the magnificence of that which is common and universal to it,” Stude explains. “By illuminating the extraordinary, I try to create awareness and inspire reverence.”
Stude’s recent art showings include “Contemporary Landscapes” at the Millard Sheets Center of the Arts in Pomona, California, “Art Kaua‘i 2007” by the Kaua‘i Society of Artists in Lihue, and Artists of Hawaii 2007 at the Honolulu Academy of Art in Honolulu, Hawaii. She is currently working on her upcoming solo exhibition at The Kaua‘i Museum for summer 2008.
Acclaim for the artist:
“Bruna Stude invites us to a sublime journey under water, which is her everyday world – a place where one dimension is lost and another one is gained. She creates light-drawings using her camera, almost on location photograms. The water, the light, and the marine inhabitants and visitors are her brushes and palette. The contour lines created by these elements function as membranes, which allow our gaze to shift among the elements in her photographs.”
– Tal Yizrael, Photography Coordinator, Millard Sheets Center For The Arts, Pomona, California
“Bruna chooses creatures who have no voice, who are often misunderstood and forgotten because they are merely beautiful but silent. Bruna speaks for the creatures who can’t, and by listening to her and seeing them as she sees them, I’m humbled by the capacity we humans have to think more meaningful thoughts, create a better existence for us to live and build a life, and respect this world and all who share it.”
– L.J.C. Shimoda, artist and gallery director of The Kaua‘i Museum
Publisher information:
IN-SIGHT is distributed by Booklines Hawaii, a division of The Islander Group. For
more information, see www.booklineshawaii.com or call 1-877-828-4852.
The 108-page book is printed in debossed soft cover. The pages are hand-sewn, with a debossed belly band made from natural craft paper. A hard-cover, limited edition of the book, numbered and signed, is available at www.brunastude.com.
Author contact information:
Bruna Stude,
www.brunastude.com,
808-652-0712
HONOLU ADVERTISER , November 21, 2007 (view article)
THROUGH THE LENS OF BRUNA STUDE
By Lesa Griffith
Twenty years ago, Bruna Stude left her native Croatia for a life crewing on yachts. A law school graduate and a newspaper reporter, in a world where Croatian wasn't the first language, she turned to photography to express herself.
Cruising around the seas to remote areas, she has photographed sharks off Burma and fishermen in Panama. Now the Kaua'i resident has collected some of her most striking images in the self-published book "In-Sight," which will be on bookshelves next month.
Her work focuses on the ocean and the things in it. Growing up in the city of Split, on the Adriatic Sea, water has always been a part of Stude's life. She first went to Kaua'i to photograph whales, and she found a place to settle.
"The waters were filled with whale song. Kaua'i is like a cross between living on the ocean and on land," said Stude. Petite and trim as a gymnast, her makeup-free, angular face brings to mind a young Georgia O'Keeffe.
"In-Sight" includes images from her series on 'opihi. The limpet caught her eye because of its similarity to the Adriatic's prilipak, which people also eat.
"I took a closer look and discovered what a wonderful subject 'opihi could be," Stude said. The extreme closeup, black-and-white studies of 'opihi reveal a ridged surface as elegant and element-eroded as columns of the Parthenon.
While in Indonesia five years ago, Stude met the owner of the One Big Truth Gallery in Santa Monica, Calif. He liked her work and showed it in the gallery.
"I was encouraged by it," Stude said.
Then last year, her work was accepted for the juried "The Art of Photography Show" at the Lyceum Theatre Gallery in San Diego. "That was the moment I felt photography might be more than my pet project," she said. She also was included in this year's "Artists of Hawaii" show at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, and she has long contributed images to the stock-photo agency Omni Photo Communications.
She originally put the photographs included in "In-Sight" together as a portfolio. People who saw it encouraged her to publish it as a book.
Stude pointed to "Two Feet Under," a wavering shot from under water of Sale Alorkeil, an Indonesian fisherman, with his legs dangling over his canoe.
"It illustrates how my life was," she said. "I made images when I could. The owner (of the boat) loved diving. For something like 'Two Feet Under' — it's not just a snapshot."
For Stude, it can take years of going to a place to get that exact moment when light, subject and water conditions are just right. In this case, the fisherman paddled his canoe away from the harbor on Komodo Island. And it's one of the few times, Stude said, that everything aligned and almost every frame was perfect.
"I waited so long," she said. "There are so many elements you have to take care of in the water."
Now she'd like to turn her talents to surf photography. "But I have so much to learn," she said. "I have to improve my surfing first."
IN-SIGHT Comments & Reviews
“The book opens in black and white, with a man playfully dangling his feet in the water, in anticipation for his journey (Two Feet Under, 2001). The pages move into the underwater experience, depicting a monochromatic photo montage of sharks, a dolphin’s speedy silhouette, schools of barracudas and intricate close-ups of polyps and anemones (including Circles, the only art from Kauai selected to be in the Honolulu Academy of Arts Artist in Hawaii 2007).
“A sense of peaceful solitude persists throughout the book, as Stude’s unobtrusive lens captures the spontaneity of these splendid creatures. And like many ocean ventures, expect the unexpected – the depth-defying journey concludes with a surprising burst of color, leaving you mesmerized. The collector’s edition is debossed, stamped and signed by the artist herself.”
– Margie Jacinto, Hawaii Modern Luxury, Honolulu, Hawaii
Bruna Stude is an exceptional person, who happens to be an artist and writer. She takes the gift she was born with into the ocean, into the darkroom, into her words, and creates a unique world for us. It is a world we all live in together, but Bruna is able to capture the essence of what that world should mean to us. Those less exceptional than Bruna look at the same world, but rarely see what she sees. How fortunate we are for the soul of Bruna, who will gently take us deeper into who we are.
In Bruna’s beautiful book, IN-SIGHT, she meets her subjects in their own underwater surroundings, and gains acceptance there, so she can experience a deeper perception of their world. She tries to reveal the unseen in her subjects, so that others will see and feel what she sees, and not be so quick to allow precious species to leave our world forever.
Many artists venture in this vein, but too often, their subject is ourselves, our familiar world, our need to communicate, and our attempts at understanding. But Bruna chooses creatures who have no voice, who are often misunderstood and forgotten because they are merely beautiful but silent. Bruna speaks for the creatures who can’t, and by listening to her and seeing them as she sees them, I’m humbled by the capacity we humans have to think more meaningful thoughts, create a better existence for us to live and build a life, and respect this world and all who share it.
– L.J.C. Shimoda, artist and gallery director of The Kaua‘i Museum
“Very nice job, well done. Great layout, color images at the end – sort of an exclamation point to drive the experience home to the reader. I think the black background references the experience of the ocean – the depth, the darkness deep down – each photograph being a window into the underwater world, itself surrounded by water.”
– Alan Bamberger, ArtBusiness.Com, San Francisco, California
