Sheila Metzner - Fine Art Photography Gallery

Notes on INHERIT THE EARTH

"Photography has made my life a most extraordinary one," says Sheila Metzner, whose hunger for beauty has taken her from the houses of Valentino and Fendi to the frozen tundras of Alaska and the deserts of Egypt. After decades of photographing in studio environments, Metzner was given a piece of wisdom by a writer friend: If she wanted to expand her artistic horizons and perhaps even change her life, she should visit the Southwestern United States. Metzner packed her bags and headed for the desert. She remembers: "I was confused and lost because I couldn't move anything!" But her friend had been right, Metzner was transformed by the wide open spaces and virtiginous canyons.

For the next seven years, Metzner made pilgrimages to parts of the earth she'd only read about in books, bringing to these environments her own dreams of a world untouched by electricity, cars, houses. Before each mountain, jungle, river and waterfall, she was inspired and humbled. Understanding that her photographs were mere attempts to "access the inaccessible," she forged ahead on her mission: "To seek the finer, in order to offer it to the world at large in cities, in towns; to inspire the awe, the memory, the feeling; and to remind myself, as well, of what we can contain, what we can be and what we have been given."