Photographer’s 6 Year Sun Composite Reflects the Cyclical Nature of Life
Photographer Marcella Pace has captured the many color shades of the sun and put them together in one image to conceptualize infinity.
Coupled with a similar image made up of different moons, the Italian photographer made a spiral of the 48 moons and 48 suns to create a “cyclical, but progressive continuity and creation.”
Pace tells PetaPixel that her images of the Sun show how the atmosphere gives different colors and shapes to Earth’s nearest star.
“The suns chosen all have particularities donated by scattering and refraction: Mock Mirage, Omega Mirage, Deformation, jaggedness from atmospheric turbulence, multicolored solar disc, and Green Flash,” she says.
“The refraction, therefore, tends to crush the solar disk when it is close to the horizon. In particular, refraction modifies the vertical diameter of the solar disk but does not affect the horizontal diameter.”
Using this information, Pace took the horizontal diameter of each sun as a reference.
“It is possible to see these features and every single shot of the suns present in the spiral composition — you can see the single ones by clicking on this interactive image.”
Editor’s note:The interactive image does not work on mobile.
Pace uses various camera bodies for the project, including a Canon Powershot, a Nikon CoolPix, a Nikon D7100, and a Sigma 150-600 mm.
“The solar eclipse was taken from one of the peaks of the dolomites in Italy,” she adds.
The composite project only came about because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Not being able to go out to photograph, I dedicated myself to the photographic material I had in the archive,” she explains.
“I have carefully chosen the shots of the suns and the moons to assemble them in these compositions.”
Meaning
Pace’s work communicates the concept of infinity. The symbolic spiral of the moons and suns create an infinite movement.
“The choice of the composition in the form of a double spiral is linked to the fact that the spiral is connected to the concepts of emanation, extension, development,” she explains.
“In particular, the idea of the same of cyclical but progressive continuity and creation, expressed by the sense of rotation.”
Pace believes the image carries a message of “respect, attention, and love for all forms of life.”
“At the basis of every civil and peaceful coexistence, there must be the awareness that our neighbor is not only our fellow man but all the forms that life assumes,” she explains.
“[Life] in its perpetuation, in its living, dying and reborn, in an eternal journey, whose path is not a circle with man at the center but a spiral of life. In constant evolution.”
Image credits: Photos by Marcella Giulia Pace.
