Carolyn Quartermaine: the Summer Traveller

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 Summer brings changes in pace-some grow lazy with idyll rocking-some grow lean with frenzied swimming-some grow rich with a camera and an artful eye. 

Luckily some stop here at little augury in their travels. Here- Carolyn Quartermaine brings her fine eye to the horizon, with an accompaniment in words by Kate Constable.

‘The eye has to travel,’ declared Diana Vreeland. But dear Diana, in that smartpuss way of not giving away the entire dish of cream, knew that the eye has to do a lot more than restlessly flit about. The eye has to delight, it has to dream, it has to select ‘with rigour and vigour’. And, of course, there has to be something behind that nomadic eye. The eye as to have a more reclusive, dream-laden twin, the inner eye to which the outer eye can send postcards from far flung places. 

Carolyn Quartermaine’s photographs are like postcards to her inner eye. These images, fleeting, fluttering moments in her day have been captured like butterflies and pinned out so their ephemeral beauty can be properly observed. These are not ‘grand shots’ of grand places. They are nothing ‘more’ than a blade of light slicing across hexagonal tiles, or a chandelier wrapped in plastic while her house is being painted, but when photographed as a postcard to her inner eye, the chandelier appears as remarkable as Miss Haversham’s tattered bridal raiment. 

Each photograph is a melding of what is and what might be… There are shades of mood and a feeling which, although taken with all the rapidity of photojournalism (and I have been with Quartermaine when she takes photos… the action is literally no more than a blink) they share a beautiful stillness. This stillness, however, is never ponderous or heavy or contrived, instead they are reminiscent of  Twombley’s polaroids, or Tarkovsky’s, with their air of perfection akin to the space between the in and out breath.

Her albums, here is Horizon Line, have seductive names like ‘Voyage’, or ‘The Key’. She picks the photographs with an ease and intuitive alertness to the patterns and rhythm in the story. There is a real ease in their lack of contrivance that means the viewer can delight in these images and be taken on a journey. Wish you were here?  

Artist and textile designer, Carolyn Quartermaine, divides her time between London and the South of France. Conversation Piece, an exhibition she curated for the Costa family, is currently on show at the Musee Fragonard in Grasse. 

Kate Constable  wrote Carolyn Quartermaine Unwrapped/ She is a journalist and has written for Elle Decor, Elle, the Sunday Times, and the Independent.)


 Carolyn Quartermaine Here


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