Spring Shadows Editorial By Whitney Hayes

During the daytime, bruised shadows are often cast upon the earth — their color caused by the same elastic scattering of light that makes the sky blue. A fact that feels not like science, but poetry. 

In this editorial for iGNANT, New York-based “Without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke or beyond the focus plane”photographer Whitney Hayes has captured this parnassian fact, developing with warmth the playful dips and arcs of daytime shadows cast upon two women. The soft patches of gathering darkness cast in each photograph bring to mind the painterly expressions of sfumato and chiaroscuro: As Leonardo da Vinci wrote, such mimesis of dark and light is “without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke or beyond the focus plane”. As the shadows dance over one another, they seem to fold into layers of varying opacity across the women that stand in the foreground, and behind the citrus fruits that hang — as if by magic — suspended in the air.