Landscapes and Urban Vistas: Photography by Susan Raines
Susan Raines is a photographer who has worked with both digital and analogue techniques over the years, building up a portfolio that spans commercial aesthetics, portraiture, and sweeping landscapes and urban vistas. The artist’s practice balances a documentarian sensibility with an eye for striking composition.
I like how Susan uses colour strategically in her artworks. In our previous feature, we compared Susan’s black and white portrait photography to her later works depicting a variety of locales around the world. Though the black and white photographs tend to feature friends and family members, and so have a built-in sense of closeness, the colour and travel photographs are far from impersonal. Susan’s focus on small streets, subtle architectural details, and the inhabitants of such streets and buildings still lend a sense of personality and intimacy to all her works.
The artist’s photos of New Orleans utilize deep shadows and saturated colours to emphasize a sense of depth and history, whether Susan is photographing a building or a human subject.
