The Structure of Nature
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Photographer
Karen M Strom
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Date of Photograph
2010-1
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Website
Mathematical forms evoke a sense of beauty. But the world of nature, while shaped by physical laws, is inherently chaotic. My goal in this series of images is to use mathematical perfection and beauty to show the equally profound beauty of the natural world.
These images make use of tile patterns generated by mathematical algorithms overlaid on complex natural systems in the real world. I hope to evoke a new world in which disordered nature is re-imagined through the eyes of mathematical order and perfection -- creating in the mindʼs eye a new beauty that is neither order nor chaos.
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Biography
Karen Strom has spent her professional career as an astronomer. Born in 1941 in Fairfax, OK, she grew up in Henryetta, OK and graduated from Harvard College in 1964. She has worked most recently at Kitt Peak National Observatory and University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She and her husband, Steve, have studied star formation and galactic structure.
Karen began photographing in 1978. She studied both silver and non-silver photography in studio courses with Todd Walker. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States and is held in several permanent collections. Recently she evaluated the new tools available and decided that the images she had wanted to achieve when she first began to seriously photograph in 1978 were now possible. The images here are the result of that exploration
