The photographs and films of Robert Stivers distort the perceptions of their viewers. Stivers’ technique utilizes soft focus, vignettes, and motion blur to create a hazy vision of the world that emboldens the viewers sense of self. A.D. Coleman writes of his photographs, “The world according to Robert Stivers is an anxious place in which vision of all is impaired, and in which no one, introvert or extrovert, can immediately feel entirely comfortable or secure…Spun around, unmoored from our reference points, off-center, stripped of the comfort and clarity of specifics, we are thrust abruptly into this astigmatic dramaturgy” (Photography in New York: International Magazine.) Cloudscapes, shadows, and close-ups offer images of fragmented memories, decaying with time but never vanishing. The haunting aesthetics of early photography and silent film resonate through Stivers’ oeuvre, fascilitating the viewer’s plunge into a familiar, but distant cultural unconscious.
Stivers manipuates his images through hand-toning and enlargement in the dark room without the aid of digital technology. His distorting power reinvigorates classical tropes like nudes, sculpture, texture, and architecture. Soft lighting likens the materials of sculpture and architecture to human flesh and the body’s forms. Vice-a-versa, his portraits of the human figure immortalize the subject like chiseled stone. Stivers’ photographs often study and celebrate the contortion and motion of the body, reflecting his years of experience as a professional dancer and choreographer.
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