DeCordova Collects Photographs: Recent Acquisitions
Maria Muller
Maria Muller’s work depends on the emotional power of rich color. Her photographs, made with infra-red film for the medium’s particular ability to capture surface texture, are painstakingly hand-colored with layers of thinned, translucent oil paints applied with cotton swabs. The colors help to establish images which are vivid, humorous, hyper-real, and almost surreal. This dream-like quality reflects the subconscious inspiration for much of Muller’s work. Her series of shoes, for example, began with a photograph of the artist’s own feet against a tiled floor, reinforced by a dream she had about “wonderful yellow socks.” She subsequently visited the homes of friends, where she photographed people with their very interesting footwear in their own environments. Broccoli in Restaurant is an image taken from Muller’s artist’s book Dreaming. This book consists of a series of hand-colored photographic images based on her dreams, accompanied by texts from her dream diaries. The entry which corresponds to this photograph read “In an empty restaurant there are plates of steaming, bright green broccoli on all the tables. A waitress sits down to eat. This restaurant only serves broccoli.”
