Shoshannah White

Shoshannah White’s cupcakes are luscious and decadent enough to eat. I first saw her floral work at Benham Gallery in Seattle, and then her subsequent submissions to Critical Mass. Her images stick with me, the dreamy texture and softness is seductive. White’s use of encaustics, creating layers of texture make this current body of work simply delicious. In looking around her website, her desire to study and expose more than just the object is evident in her visual signature. Shoshannah is walking us into our own desires, yearnings, emotional connections.

In her own words:

Desserts
The works included in this collection use desserts to explore ideas of decadence, seduction, abstraction and ambiguity. Each image begins as a detail photograph of something sweet. The print is then “frosted” and layered with encaustic paint. By building upon the surface of the photograph with beeswax and oil paint, the image can fade and emerge, become solid and hazy – at once hiding and exposing itself beneath the surface. There is a luminescence in the beeswax that glows through these layers and offers a tantalizing, sugar like coating to both encapsulate and preserved the photograph. The final piece itself takes on the look and feel of a dessert – delicious but unreachable.

Foods
The photographs included in this body of work look into ideas of vulnerability and protection… of what is not said and what lies below the surface. I tend to use everyday objects to take a close look at the beauty and fragility of life. These days I’m looking at foods – foods that sweeten, preserve and ultimately decay. My process involves coating the surface of the photograph with beeswax. By building upon the surface of the photograph with this translucent material, the image can fade and emerge, become solid and hazy – at once at once vulnerable and protected by the layers above.

Biography:

Shoshannah White received her BFA in photography from Savannah College of Art & Design, Savannah, GA. Her work has appeared in Paris Vogue, GQ Spain, Photo District News, and numerous other magazines. She has been exhibited around the country. Her fine art work is represented by Pilar Graves, Los Angeles, and her stock photography is represented by Aurora & Quanta, Portland, ME.

All images copyright by Shoshannah White. Used with permission.