Pictured: Untitled photo series by Allison Barnes, with Vickie Riley (at left) and Alison Barnes.
Photos owned by Vickie Riley, Digital Resources Content Producer, Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery.

I had been looking for something to go on a large wall at home for a while, and I knew that I wanted it to be about nature, but I didn’t want it to be common.  And I’d been looking for a long time, and couldn’t find anything.

One evening, Alison Barnes invited my family over for dinner, and they were showing us around their house. I walked into the living room and saw these, and I said, ‘Oh my God! Where did you get these?!’ And she said, ‘Oh, I took ‘em. Yeah, they’re mine, there’s a whole box of them in my parents basement.’ And I just fell in love with them!... They are a different way of looking at things that you see all the time. I don’t get bored with them. And they also remind me very much of Alison, because they are very quiet and beautiful….I knew she was a photo-grapher, but I didn’t know about this work. So when I look at them, they remind me to dig deeper with the people in your world, the people you care about.  Because, again, I know this is corny, but there is this richness and depth in people you know, but then there is more that you don’t know about - and I love that.

When I can look at something and feel more than ‘That’s a beautiful object,’ – when I can feel a connection to the maker - it’s a deeper thing than looking at something on a museum wall. I think that’s why I looked for so long – that’s why I hadn’t found anything.  Because there needed to be that connection.
Vickie Riley, 2012