Life
Since 2012, Mary Jo Hoffman has taken one snap a day of the natural objects around her. She explains what lies behind two of them – and what the “art of noticing” has brought to her life
By Gege Li
Palourde clam shells from the Mediterranean Sea
Mary J Hoffman
These photos provide a snapshot into a decades-long creative endeavour celebrating the beauty of the natural world.
Since 2012, aeronautical engineer-turned-artist Mary Jo Hoffman has taken one photo a day of the natural objects around her. But what started out as a creative challenge to simply get better at art composition has now evolved into a “comprehensive way of being”, she says.
Twelve years and thousands of photos later, Hoffman still finds beauty in her surroundings, often no further away than her home in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her book, Still: The art of noticing, which will be published on 18 April, collects 275 photos from her project, two of which are shown here.
Pictured in the main image above, are an assortment of palourde clam shells from the Mediterranean Sea, the remnants of a spaghetti and clam dinner in southern France. Hoffman wanted to commemorate the varied colouration of each clam, and this aftermath proved too good an opportunity to pass up.
A feather from a sandhill crane.
Mary J Hoffman
Pictured above is a feather from a sandhill crane. Hoffman selected this downy number during the moulting season of a resident pair of cranes that have set up their summer nests next to her house.
Hoffman’s background in aeronautics means her idea of beauty has always bent towards the mathematical – the intricacies of feathers, for example, seen with the naked eye or zoomed in to the finest details, illustrate “beauty at every level”, she says.
As for the project, “I truly feel I have stumbled onto an elegantly simple practice that lets me experience the sacred almost every day,” she says.
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