Deborah Bay is an emerging photographer that has won well-deserved praise for her "The Big Bang" series. While her other work is equally interesting, I'll focus mainly on that series.

9mm Glock ballFrom Deborah Bay's "The Big Bang" series The subject of the series is quite unusual: close-up color photography of bullets shot into plexiglas. Interestingly, that description would not entice me at all - it sounds boring. But the pictures are fascinating, aesthetically stunning and mind-boggling. I did not know what I was looking at before being told. One is reminded of cosmological photography as much as of anything else.

As someone passionate about contrast in all its meanings when related to photography, I love the stark and shocking contrast between the quiet and peaceful beauty of the pictures and the violence of what they ultimately depict. While these are controlled shootings of firearms and not acts of violence being represented, they are still remnants of powerful events, and document the usage of destructive force, and the (literal) impact it has. Yet they seem quiet and peaceful, resembling tranquil galaxies more than bloody murder. The sheer beauty is exquisite and the color treatment greatly - but subtly - highlights it.

44 Magnum from Deborah Bay's "The Big Bang" seriesThe color adds to a mystifying picture This once again goes to illustrate that acts which we think of as ugly - violence, explosions, debris - can take on a very real formal beauty on a pure aesthetic level. Of course, this might be less strikingly illustrated here than in disturbing works that emphasize violence on humans, but still, the apparent disconnect between what we might morally disapprove and what we find beautiful is very interesting.

As such, we are introduced to Bay's work as an illustration of photography as an art of the unexpected. Beauty reveals itself in unlikely places, and the debris of a firearm being shot certainly was an unexpected place to look for as far as I am concerned. 

Untitled 4, from the series "The Fringes of Cyberia" by Deborah BayA taste of another of Bay's series, this one commenting on electronic waste While I wished to highlight this particularly fascinating series of Bay's, the rest of her work is also very interesting, and confirms this interest of finding beauty in unexpected places or processes. I strongly encourage you to check her other work out too.