Andrea Zinn

Andrea Zinn is a still life photographer specializing in flower photography.

• If your photography could speak, what would it say about you?

I come to photography with a painter's eye. It's about the light. Sunlight, shadows, reflections and transparency. Light bouncing off reflective surfaces, light revealing structure. Objects illuminated, objects emerging from darkness. I’m always fascinated by the way that light animates an image and creates a mood.

• Is there a place or environment where you feel most yourself as a photographer?

Whether I’m in my home studio or out shooting in the street, for me photography is the experience of heightened awareness when I have a camera in my hand. More and more, I think about my favorite quote from the poet Mary Oliver:

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

• If you could describe your photography in one feeling, what would it be?

Awareness

• And finally — from the photographs exhibited in Decagon, is there one that holds personal meaning for you?

Chiaroscuro/Tulips/4 is a photograph that actually surprised me when I downloaded the image from my camera. The tulips seemingly bursting out of the frame confirmed the idea that a still life doesn’t necessarily have to be “still”. It’s become one of my most popular photographs.