I was first introduced to Eleonora years ago. She and I met in Portland, at Photolucida  and was showing a wonderful series on amusement parks, Once Upon a Time. I was a fan of hers immediately. This year she was gracious enough to spend some time with me outside the review room and show me her newest work, Of Light and Shadows. Beautiful, elegant and rich in texture, this series transcends simple landscapes or architectural views. She gets to the essence of place. Take a look.

 

Of Lights and Shadows –

I have lived in California for the last fourteen years, but Buenos Aires, my hometown, still feeds my roots and nourishes my soul. I return there nearly every year, and in 2011 while wandering there again, I felt a transformation — a shift in me that led to this latest project.

I began to revisit and photograph places of my childhood. Places I had avoided visiting or shooting because they reminded me too painfully of my father and his death when I was still very young. This time I explored without restriction or agenda, and found myself at Recoleta Cemetery. And it was there that my transition and this project emerged.

These are images that capture those moments of escaping light, of shadows trapped in folds of stone and gravity, the vanity of cold concrete crumbling beneath the unavoidable flow of time, and the sudden and improbable lightness of hope even in the darkest moments.

About Eleonora Ronconi – 

Eleonora Ronconi was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1969. Growing up in Buenos Aires she tried to balance her love for the arts and sciences. Having to pick one when she finished high school, she attended medical school for four years, but then had a change of heart and followed her entrepreneurial spirit and fluency in multiple languages to begin a career in conference interpreting. Her business has allowed her to travel extensively, and in 1998 she settled in Palo Alto, CA and established her own interpreting company. She now lives in Santa Clara, CA.

She has passionately continued her studies in art history, painting, and photography. She has taken photography workshops with Mary Ellen Mark, Sam Abel and Ed Kashi among others, and her work has been selected to participate in several juried exhibitions in the USA and internationally. She was the Emerging Photographer chosen by VERVE gallery in the summer of 2010. She was also chosen as a curator for the Latin American week on the Lenscratch blog during the month of October, 2012. Her first solo exhibition was in her native Buenos Aires in 2009.

Her work has been published by the Maine Department of Labor, F-Stop Magazine, Fraction Magazine, Lenscratch and Le Journal de la Photographie among others. Some of her pieces have been acquired by private collectors around the country.

 

For more beautiful images from Eleonora, please log onto her website.