“Go-between” (2004), a limited edition print by English photographer Dominic Rouse.
Although Michael had an interest in photography at a young age, it wasn’t until he discovered the work of celebrated English surrealist photographer Dominic Rouse that he began to see the potential of photography as fine art.
Born in 1959, Dominic Rouse utilized his background in photojournalism and advertising to perfect his craft of digitally manipulating photographs. His mastery of constructing an image and creating a world that doesn’t exist reignited Michael’s passion for the medium and led to a shift in the curatorial direction of The Michael Aaron Gallagher Fine Art Collection, broadening the scope beyond paintings to include fine art photography. In fact, it was because of Rouse that Michael began to collect 16”x20” limited edition prints.
One of the most intriguing photographs in the collection is Dominic Rouse’s “Go-between,” an image of a ballerina and a vulture that is both mesmerizing and dreamlike. When asked about the picture, Rouse explained its relationship to another of his popular photographs “Angeline,” which features the same model as well as a vulture. The model in the photograph was actually a composite of four different models, he explained.
“The ‘distressed’ nature of her tights were created in the computer using the trunks of plane trees photographed in Argentina,” Rouse said. “The rather sombre background was photographed in a school in Phnom Penh, Cambodia… You may notice an architectural impossibility at the wall above the stairs which is one of the ‘homages’ to M.C. Escher’s genius which I like to include where appropriate/possible in my photographs.”
Michael hopes to one day add more of Dominic’s photographs to The Collection and to continue to share his work with art lovers around the world.
For more information about photographer Dominic Rouse, visit his web site at www.dominicrouse.com.
To view more original works in The Michael Aaron Gallagher Fine Art Collection click here. For information about works that have been donated to the collection click here.