Josephine's Rapture

One of the biggest challenges in taking photographs of lamps is that the light source that is projected onto the lamp in order to photograph it often masks the light source of the lamp iteself, making it difficult to successfully capture the way it functions as a lamp. This is particularly true when the light(s) are not situated in an obvious location (e.g. a glass tulip or glass ball). This is certainly the case for "Josephine's Rapture". On first viewing, one might suspect that this is only a sculpture with no "lamplike" aspects. For this reason, I will try to explain how it is being illuminated when it is not being photographed. There are 2 sources of light built into this lamp. The first is behind the big spoon in the front. This serves to cast very interesting shadows on the face of the lamp, caused by the ridges in the art nouveau brass plate, which (I suspect) served as a ceiling plate for a chandelier in France at the beginning of the 20th century. The second is behind the brass plate facing upwards which projects some very interesting shadows on the ceiling, caused by the copper spirals. There is a white porcelain "toilet pull" (visible from the photo) which can turn on/off the light in the back, independent of the light in the front. This lamp is a good example of my current intention or focus related to the creative process... to build a sculpture that is independently interesting, absorbing, often whimsical (i.e. even if it weren't a lamp). At the same time, to "play with" light in inviting ways (using shadows, reflection, filtering, etc.), that go beyond the more common objective of filling (sometimes bombarding) a room with light, and using the sculture as the "target" of illumination. .