About the work
A combination of photography and digital imaging that derives from observations of places, people, and things.
Photographic Works
The Photographs on this website focus largely on the ideas and theories of Gestalt Psychology and Visual Perception. The images provided are a small selection from the archives of Derek Rankins and his larger project titled “The Part and the Whole.” The combination of this website and his other websites work to create conversations around his photography and his research presented on Middlepiece. These combinations serve as a centerpiece to a sort of philosophy that surrounds Derek’s work through a Hegelian Dialectic approach to seeing, thinking and understanding.
The Part and the Whole
We say Art and Aesthetics because sometimes we want you to simply just have a beautiful aesthetic experience minus the context of Art and the label that comes with it sometimes. We love Art and there is a lot of philosophical and theoretical underpinnings in all of our work but sometimes we can get too caught up in theory or ideas to see the simplicity and beauty of something by itself. Think Rothko Chapel and the duality of the work and the space or James Turrell. You don’t need to know much about Art to enjoy the work.
We are witnessing collisions and failures of certain legacy systems but its allowing for a lot of creation and invention.