A Fine Eye For Detail
December, 1991
By Nancy Bartels
Senior Editor, Confetti
Wendi Schneider uses photography and paint to capture the beauty of simple things and simpler times...
"The details in objects fascinate me," says photographer Wendi Schneider. "The interplay of the various elements - composition and balance, light and shadow, the beauty of the line. When you get up close and focus on the details, the picture becomes abstract. It becomes simple and essential, reduced to the elemental beauty of the object."
This fascination with the details is reflected in every aspect of Schneider's varied professional life. The Memphis-born photographer began her training as a painter at Tulane University and came to photography only when she began making reference shots of her models for figurative paintings. "I just fell in love with photography," she says. But the training of that eye for detail and Schneider's artistic drive both came much earlier. Born to a family of artists, early on she accompanied her mother, a needlepoint artist, on antiquing expeditions around Memphis, beginning a lifetime love affair with beautiful old things. Spending her college years and the remainder of her 20s in the lush, historic city of New Orleans further developed her romantic, rich, and evocative style. Her first creative job after college as a designer...