Time Capsules is a Macro Photography Series that captures otherworldly landscapes.

In my personal research on old family belongings, objects that could retain the past, I found 2 hand blown glass paperweights that belonged one to my father and other to my father-in-law, who left us last year. Father figures represented on blocks of blown glass, objects I carry with me as reminders of their presence in my life.

When using them in a still photography session, I noticed through the lens, their individual beauty, with several properties that could be investigated through Macro Photography.

Then, through my Macro Lens, something beyond was revealed to me. The existence of those small bubbles inside, which, when enlarged, assumed a supernatural aspect, revealing fragments of encapsulated worlds, which contained their own atmosphere, their air of the past...

When that became clear to me, I started building this Collection in search of the “magical photospheres” these objects contained.

Sensitive images that evoke other worlds, other Times. 

Capsules that store air and encapsulated weight memories of the past.

Time Capsules - - -

TIME CAPSULES, 2022, is a Macro Photographic Series composed of delicate abstract images evoking another World, another Time, stored in bubbles that retain memories of the Past...


Time Capsules S5

The MILKY WAY series comprises 12 unique botanical artworks that combine classic aesthetics and innovative concepts.

The work began with botanical photographs that, through digital collage, resulted in final images that reached abstraction. In my artistic approach, the garden flowers, wet after the rainy days, were "digitally harvested", that is, photographed in their natural environment, in their reflected light, in their essence, allowing themselves, after a meticulous digital pos-production process, the emergence of new forms. An individualized aesthetic way of creating abstract images of original nature.

Milky Way

I perceive nature as our driving force, seeking, in its aesthetic, representation to approach this transforming energy as a whole. Thus, I direct my gaze to this world of deep, sensitive and ephemeral shapes, colors and abundant textures of life.

These works are part of a Series entitled “MANTRAS”. The Series is composed of images created from photographic capture, which were then digitally worked in Photoshop, as an exercise of composing a “Collection of Invented Plants”.

PS: "In more sophisticated forms, Mantras are melodic phrases with spiritual interpretations, like a human yearning for truth, reality, light, immortality, peace, love, knowledge and action." For me, a rhythm connection to my creative labor.

Mantras Collection, Breezes

These works are part of an ongoing series entitled “MANTRAS” which is composed of images created from photographic capture digitally worked in Photoshop to compose a “Collection of Invented Plants”.

Unable to travel, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I nurtured the practice of botanical illustration as a meditative exercise of self-expression. This movement triggered a different photographic practice in me. Pointing my macro lenses to the plants around, I saw a Microcosm.

I believe that my interior journey resonated in this new work, which mixes Photography, Botanical Illustration and Graphic Design. Inspired by works from Ernst Haeckel, I felt motivated to create a system that represented my own invented nature. In these images I use, as a generating matrix, the leaves of a succulent called “Mother of Thousands” – “Kalanchoe laetivirens”, which I got shortly before quarantine and since then has generated several other "daughters" here at home, with their fascinating power of multiplication.

Inspired by Goethe and the book “The Metamorphosis of Plants” – which defends “The archetypal leaf concept”, which considers floral organs as modified leaves - I challenged myself to create a system through variations of original organic forms, modeling digital compositions that allowed the configuration of “new species”, recording their specimens through modern “Naturaliums” based aesthetically on scientific discoveries of the 18th and 19th centuries. 

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PATRÍCIA ABREU