Encounters

by James O’Mara

The photographic art of James O’Mara can be approached in as many ways as the poetry residing in it.
Discussing his work, O’Mara says, “I try to approach every adventure in life as if it were a dance. “I need that pulse, that rhythm.” In fact, in his pictures we can perceive not only the moment captured by the camera lens, but also a “before” and an “after”.
He has the ability to grasp the dynamism of the scene, even in perfectly still subjects: the ephemeral moment, the instant in which a figure reveals his or her nature or events show new meanings.
The writer William Gibson says about his work, “Often their images are extraordinarily beautiful, but never merely so. Anchored in a warm sense of humanity, their own and the photographer’s, they afford glimpses of life as seen through a more informed eye, a more lyrical reading of the play of light.”
The large-format volume is ideal to enjoy the author’s , nest shots spanning about 50 years, from the rock stars of the late Sixties (Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Carole King), to the most recent portraits of people, famous and otherwise, and on to moments of everyday life in his beloved cities of Vancouver, Los Angeles, Paris and, naturally, Florence.