“I choose to take photos because I liked the idea of being able to stop time for a moment,” says Rhode Island photographer Kate Salvi. “I live with anxiety and manic depression so being able to stop for a minute and focus on something beautiful that takes me away from my thoughts is very intoxicating.”
When she was twenty-two, Salvi was given a Canon camera by her mother who appreciated art and worked in Admissions at the Rhode Island School of Design. Salvi soon went on to take photography courses at RISD.
“While others in the class were photographing things like bowls of fruit I concentrated on the anti war protest downtown so my photos stood out from the others in the class,” she remembers. “My professor encouraged me to keep taking photos.
“That was the last time I took pictures of people. My social anxiety keeps me away from groups of people and family gatherings so I no longer take photos of people.”
Initially, Salvi took black and white photos of her young nephew. “My subject matter changed when I started going to every museum exhibit I could at RISD and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and witnessing photographs of sculptures and graffiti.”
Now using a Nikon D3100, she’s shot her own graffiti scenes in her home town of Providence. “I find graffiti appealing because it’s so colorful and bright,” she says. “It often covers the sides of buildings which would otherwise be plain concrete walls.”
Also attracted to flowers, Salvi’s first efforts were in black and white but she soon switched to color for its range of tones and vibrancy.
“I go out looking for flowers. I shoot year round because my husband buys me flowers in the winter to photograph. I then set up still-lifes using a portrait setting on my iPhone to create a black background.”
Salvi is drawn to closeups of flowers, crediting artist Georgia O’Keefe’s floral studies as an influence. “I especially focus on irises, inspired by Van Gogh’s Irises painting which depicts his sense of loneliness as a yellow iris in a field of purple.
“Stopping in the midst of city traffic and other people and shooting a photograph of a flower is very satisfying as it keeps me in the moment rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.“
Currently Salvi is expanding her work into a collage greeting cards business.
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