REVIEW

Thomas Vorce. Lens to the World
Santa Fe, February, 2007

To view the world through the camera lens of Thomas Vorce is as though from behind a mask. We can contemplate the universe with the detachment and appreciation of a god but also with the heart and soul of a child.

Without fanfare, but with intuition and elegant simplicity, we are offered the opportunity to see the world in new ways ... and if we accept this challenge our view is forever changed. With dramatic wit, irony, and minimal values of tint and shade (but without the florescent, photo-shopped, multi-hued, New Mexico sunsets) we become capable of finding significance in the seeming insignificant aspects of life among the rays of light, the reflections, and the asymmetry of our place.
With the sureness of his maturity, with the boldness of a personal vision, and with the capability to isolate the visually significant within our visually overloaded reality, Thomas Vorce places us at his view-finder and opens his shutter. For the same reason that Monet refused the operation on his eyes, Thomas Vorce has taken his whole life to "see" as he does now. And through his camera he takes us along with him. The view is sophisticated, elegant, simple, starkly real, and dramatic, carrying all the aesthetic potential of which the human brain and eye are capable.

Not everything is laid out for us. We are challenged to bring ourselves, our own "view", to this exchange. The Vorce photographs are not answers, they are questions. We feel the burden to ponder and respond. We are honored to participate. What could be more common here than shadows, trees and clouds? We are enriched by the insight.

Verne Stanford is a Professor of Visual Art and arts writer. He has served as Director of the Penland School, The Maui Arts Center, and The New Mexico Crafts Council.