Human fascination with natural wonders seems to always be focussed on the larger-than-life. After all, in a world with the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls, it becomes easy to ignore the small details that make the great outdoors so special.
With his exhibition at the Greenburgh Town Hall, local nature photographer Gideon Vardi captures the beauty of the Australian Eucalyptus by zooming into sections of its bark. And he does all of this only with the camera on his cell phone and minimal to no editing (in fact, the only editing that you find in Vardi’s work are crops and rotations made in the iPhone camera app). His low-tech style and natural choice of subject are a perfect match for each other, as Vardi brings the unique swirls of Australian Eucalyptus bark to Westchester audiences in a raw and realistic form.
Professional artistry is a new path for Vardi. Before this upcoming debut display in the Greenburgh Town Hall, Vardi worked in the civil engineering, consulting and business fields. “I’m considered to be an artist, which I never did,” he says. Even though he has never used the word “artist” to label himself, he has been taking photographs all his life. Vardi joined a photography club after his wife’s passing, and he soon became enamored by the images he saw in the bark on the Australian Eucalyptus, the way one can see pictures in clouds. So, of course, he began to photograph them.
About the bark, Vardi says, “I’ve taken pictures of other trunks in the past, but nothing compared to this.” His work originally served to draw the viewer’s eye toward his own interpretation of the bark’s patterns, and he named the photographs after the images he saw. But if you go to Vardi’s exhibition, that is not all you will see. By moving away from naming his photographs, Vardi invites the viewer to find their own interpretation, their own shapes in the bark. This line of thinking became the main theme of Vardi’s exhibition, even inspiring its name: What Do You See?
Artistic choices such as the photograph’s names were taken with great care. For Vardi, even something as seemingly simple as the placement of his signature can completely transform his piece. He takes his time, cropping and rotating his work until he finds the ideal composition. After all, with no other forms of editing, these details become all the more important.
Vardi came to display his work at Greenburgh Town Hall after seeing another artist’s exhibition there, Howard Robinson’s Fallen Flowers. While at Robinson’s show, Vardi approached the director of the Greenburgh Arts and Culture Committee, Sarah White, about displaying an exhibit of his own. White loved his art, and before he knew it, Vardi was selected for his first exhibition.
Despite the fact that each of Vardi’s photographs are of the same subject, each piece is unique. No one Eucalyptus bark is like another, and Vardi has a perfect eye for noticing and capturing the beautiful differences between them that others may not notice. Just like an abstract painting, each viewer will find something different in each of Vardi’s abstract photographs.
Vardi won’t be finished with his abstract nature photography after his exhibition is over. In fact, he isn’t even done with trees. “You can see streaks of real colors in trees in Africa,” he says. It’s safe to say that as long as nature creates its own beautiful abstractions, Vardi won’t be done creating his.
What Do You See? will be on display at the Greenburgh Town Hall during the months of September and October, with a reception on Sept.13. It is dedicated to his late wife Tsipi Vardi, a longtime educator and lover of the arts.
