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Venerable Flowers

For photographer and Berkeley resident Elvira Piedra, it is the camera that opens a door inside her through which she observes the world and “often it is the camera itself that reveals the world.” She feels that the forms which emerge between the poles of darkness and lightness are what offer substance in our lives. Elvira discovered photography in her early childhood through looking at old family portraits. The impressions of these black and white images, of people related and dear to her, remain the most enduring influences on the work she has made. These early photographs also suggested something mysterious to her, and made her want to experience a world different from the one seen with ordinary sight.

Linda Elvira Piedra was born in Southern California and she spent her early adulthood engaged in dance, literature, and film studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz , and the University of Alaska at Anchorage . She also studied book binding at Le Centre des Arts du Livre in Paris, France . She began studying photography in 1995 at City College in San Francisco. Between 1997 and 2007, she lived in New Mexico where she met and was guided in the practice of photography by Walter Chappell who encouraged her to work with the 8x10 view camera. In February of this year, she opened a studio in Berkeley, California.