Chicago photographer, Kate Stone, has an arresting and off-kilter series, At the Seams, that is garnering a lot of interest. The project explores what is perceived and what is real. Kate has a unique way of looking at environments, reflected also in her series, Untitled Rooms. She finds architectural connections and skillfully manipulates spacial relationships into reinterpreted constructions, allowing unremarkable spaces to become remarkable creations. I discovered her work through the The Tierney Fellowship, a foundation that supports emerging photographers. After graduating from Bard in 2009, Kate’s has had a full plate of exhibitions and awards, and this is just the beginning of what will surely be a long career in bringing a fresh sensibility to photographic practice.

At the Seams:
For this series I used photographs of domestic interiors and common architecture to construct impossible, uncanny spaces that evoke a feeling of hesitant curiosity, a nervous desire to explore the room, to peek around the bend or to see what lies behind the door at the end of the hall. Our acceptance of photography as reality makes these images hard to understand, especially for those who know the original place. At first glance the rooms and buildings in these photographs appear real. Upon closer examination, however, something is clearly wrong. Doorways are misplaced and once rigid walls are twisted and torn. Distorted perspective creates incongruent angles and improbable shadows. These spaces are literally falling apart at the seams.