Deborah Osburn, owner of Clé, the prominent tile boutique, knew she’d found something special when she glimpsed through photographer Peggy Wong’s work.
“For two or three years, I’d been hoping to stumble into a photographer with that kind of impact,” she says.
She’s was looking for a bold kind of photography that could be lithographed dramatically onto snow-white, Thassos marble from Greece.
And she found it, on Wong’s blog, http://bluepoolroad.com/.
“Stylistically and aesthetically, I knew I had a real draw,” she says. “I called her and said: ‘We’ve been looking for a photographer, and I think it’s you.’”
It was a year before the two got together, but in the process, both Clé and Wong’s work began to mature. When they did meet, Wong shared several images, in both black and white and color, for potential lithography.
Wong studied graphic design and photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology, eventually choosing graphic design as her major. She started her blog to promote the photos she shoots when she travels. It became very popular, very quickly.
“As it all unfolded, her work got more recognized,” Osburn says.
That’s probably because her photogaphy is self-edited on the spot, as only a graphic designer might see it. There’s a framing element that’s personal, but that appeals to all who view it.
“It has a lot to do with the moment that I’m there – that instant, that feeling,” Wong says. “It’s like: ‘I must pick up my camera and shoot.’ In Vancouver, I was looking at telephone poles and architecture, and my heart literally skipped a beat.”
The result is photography that transports the viewer to the defining moment of perception between photographer and subject – and often, a familar image seen in a new and different way.
Clé now offers a new collection of her work: seven black and white photos printed with dream-like luminosity on the Greek stone.
“They’re literally breath-taking,” says Wong of her first look at them. “I thought: ‘Is this my artwork, or a puzzle come to life?’ The way the light comes through – it’s just beautiful.”
And the medium only enhances the mood of the photography.
“The marble?” Wong asks. “You have to see it in person – I was literally blown away.”
She’s not alone.
For more on Peggy Wong and Clé, go to http://cletile.com/pwtravelogue-/
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