Panopticon Gallery is pleased to present Recollections: Diana H. Bloomfield and Sal Taylor Kydd. The two artists in this exhibition create soft, dream-like photographs that reflect the elusive and ambiguous nature of memory.

In her series The Old Garden, Diana H. Bloomfield photographs flowers cut from her garden and left to wither. The soft, muted colors against the textured surface of her studio are brought to life in Bloomfield’s use of gum bichromate, a 19th-century photographic process that combines chemistry and watercolor paints. Finding beauty in their decay, flowers including camellias, Lenten roses, and quince speak to Bloomfield’s southern roots and her memories of her grandparents’ garden.

Sal Taylor Kydd explores the idea of memory and our attempts to preserve it. Photographing the people and landscapes of her home in Maine, her images show moments that are clear and striking even as details of time, place, and identity are lost in the peripheral blur. Hand-printed in platinum-palladium, each photograph gives the appearance of a small moment, becoming a keepsake of the mysteries of the natural world and the distortion of memory over time.