Sestina

A large volume, private exhibition of decadent classicism in contemporary photos. This unusual suite of photographs uses the poetic form of Sestina combined with other signature Stivers' elements: Romanticism, mysticism, Gothic and Baroque art, Symbolism and film. With a contemporary edge eerily recalling the past, the photos seem dredged up from a seance. Named after a complex French poetic form based upon repetition, the Sestina was practiced by Swinburne, Kipling and Auden, and transformed by Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and Elizabeth Bishop. Here, John Woods' poetry illuminates Stivers' surreal imagery.