Mary Serphos

As a creative image photographer, I find what is in front of me and then meld all the aspects of the image, from the subject matter to the negative space into one cohesive piece of art. By weaving real and surreal, using imagination and dream, my work is the doorway to an escape, sometimes to a faraway place, often tinged with nostagia from a time and place long ago when life was perceived to be more simple.

My work focuses on the vastness and breadth of day-to-day life, incorporating everything from the mundane to the complex, whether close in to my home of Marin County in Northern California to afar locations such as Cuba, Morocco and "the other coast."

Using elements from the natural world to the rawness of street photography, my goal is spark emotion and contemplation and allow the viewer to get a glimpse into what is often too private, or seemingly off limits to the ordinary eye. As I put the camera down and work to edit what I have captured, it’s an intriguing and almost addictive process to add deeper dimensions and layers to create the the final image.

Mary started taking photos as a child, inspired by her father's devout love of photography. In 1998, on a trip to Thailand, she used her first digital SLR camera a...