Stella Kalaw


© Stella Kalaw

I first learned of Stella Kalaw's work when she kindly left a comment on Tethered a few months ago, and I'm only just now getting around to posting about her, as is usually the case. I find her photographs hauntingly beautiful--the quality of light and color really blow me away. Family Spaces is my personal favorite from among her three galleries--each diptych is like its own short story, the kind that stays with you, the kind that's there when you close the page and turn out the bedside light. I felt this even before I looked at the second series on her website, entitled The House Remembered, which fittingly is a collaboration with writer Marianne Villanueva. 

Combining word and image can be tricky--at its worst it can be like the copy of the Tao Te Ching I bought on amazon a while back, with its cheesy, typical black-and-white photos of birds in flight and silhouettes of trees against the sky. But I believe Kalaw and Villanueva mostly hit the right note here: lyrical words are paired with lyrical images, each informing the other, quietly taking their time to sink in. I suppose my favorite kind of photographs generally have this lyricism, revealing layers from within their quiet intimacy. 

Kalaw also maintains a blog which you can see here

Comments

Marianne said…
Hello, Elizabeth, Thank you for posting about my collaboration with Stella. I just posted about YOUR post on my blog, Kanlaon (anthropologist.wordpress.com) and I linked to your blog.

I thank Stella for introducing me to your work, which is so powerfully mysterious . . .
Hi Marianne,

You're very welcome, it really is a wonderful collaboration and your writing is so evocative. Thanks for the link on your site, I'm happy too that I found Stella's work, I'm a huge fan.

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