In-Camera Multiple Exposure Photography, The Double Entendre Collection
Review by Christine O’Leary -Rocke:
Within the obvious simplicity of a fern, there is the tremendous complexity of reoccurring shape and color. Amidst the stark and sometimes radical contrast found within the natural landscape, there is subtlety and nuance- meaning and form. Photographer Erin Sparler’s double image photography investigates these features of the world around us by creating layers of depth and meaning, juxtaposing symbols with shape, repetition with color- giving an impressionistic view of natural world through color, shape and size. These photographic images can incorporate two, three, even four exposures, carefully layered to present a possibility within that was there all of the time- just waiting to be seen…
Sparler’s double-exposure images are contemplative studies of composition and voice. Through the deliberate blending of texture and form, Sparler gives the viewer a meditation on the natural world that incorporates lines, curves, and forms, often juxtaposed within manmade objects and creations to create a new concept, inviting the viewer to consider the familiar once again for the very first time. The juxtaposition of these objects creates dreamworld of secondary meanings; the resulting images speaking of man’s dependency on nature and technology and yet simultaneous disregard for both.
One of Erin Sparler’s main series of double exposure pieces is her ‘Double Entendre’ or “Double Take” series- initially a series of internal double exposures captured with a traditional 35 mm SLR camera juxtaposing two or more images on one frame in order to allow the artist to deliberately work with regressive technology to explore some of her own personal ideologies. Sparler’s work as a Professor of Digital Arts has inspired her to explore some historic methods of alternative process photography, such as those developed by Man Ray or Jerry Uelsmann, and in doing so provide the vehicle to move into the new. By deliberately using such technology, Sparler reminds the viewer that an image is not an easy thing and, as such, requires the participation of the viewer to reach for the meaning within.
Sparler‘s Double Entendre series often challenges the viewer with technology and religious symbolism. She says, “Having studied and taught art history extensively, the blatant symbolism moves me to contrast it with our blindness.” Sometimes, Sparler says, “The themes developed in these images reflect my personal quest for enlightenment. I am seeking a deeper personal understanding of modern life and the concepts we embrace in the western culture. Some of the ideas that I am developing revolve around nature, religion, and technology.”
The Double Entendre series incorporates seemingly incongruous elements including steeples, electric poles, trash, and nature. “Art history,” Sparler declares, “ demonstrates that common objects inherently reflect the ideals of a society. It is for this reason that I do not shun electric poles or garbage, but instead use them to represent an ever-present, persistent, and yet seldom seem object of our society.”
In her artist’s statement, Sparler stresses her concerns expressed in her work: “…I feel that there is a destructive cycle developing in our society. Religion used to revere nature, and nature supported man. But this has changed. Man invented the machine.”
The Double Entendre series illustrates these three conflicting themes of nature, religion, and technology. “Humans ignore nature, fight over religion, and live in oblivion of their dependency upon technology. I feel that our attitudes towards nature, religion, and technology create a self-destructing loop. The replacement of ‘pagan’ or nature-based religions, such as Druidism and the South American and American Indian religions, with Catholic and Christian based ideology eroded the importance of nature in modern society. These nature-based religions created respect and reverence for nature and the environment, while Christianity encouraged the control and dominance of the natural world.”
Angels and Angles:
The Union of Icon and Earth
In this series of in-camera multiple exposures, I explore the intersection of religious iconography and the natural world. By layering cemetery angels, Madonna statues, and crucifixions with the organic textures of the forest, I dissolve the boundaries between human spirituality and the raw divinity of the earth.
Influenced by Emerson’s Nature and the Transcendentalist movement, these images portray tree branches weaving through sacred geometry and bark twisting into ancient church thresholds. For me, this work is a physical embodiment of the flow state found while hiking—a meditative clarity that reveals our deep interconnectedness with the environment.
The New Architecture of Connection
Where my previous work focused on traditional religious icons, these images center on the monuments of the digital and industrial age. Cell towers and telephone poles become modern-day steeples, stretching toward the sky to facilitate a different kind of “omnipresence” through constant connectivity. By juxtaposing the rigid lines of a power grid or the cold curve of a gas tank with the twisting limbs of a forest, I highlight the universal dynamicism that exists even in our most utilitarian structures
Temporal Perspective: The inclusion of clocks in these layered compositions introduces a meditation on temporal perspective. They serve as a reminder of the human desire to track and control time, even as the natural world operates on a much slower, more ancient rhythm. Through this body of work, I invite the viewer to look past the perceived ugliness of industrial debris and see the underlying patterns—the “Double Entendre”—where the bark of a tree and the steel of a tower share a singular, complex space.
Life, Death, Movement and Mandalas
In this final series of multiple exposure photographs, I push the boundaries of the in-camera technique by layering three, four, and even five distinct exposures into a single frame. By combining these layers with deliberate focal shifts and camera rotations, I transform light into architectural elements—creating beams and shafts that spiral into complex, mandala-like patterns.
Technical Precision
Each piece is a result of meticulous timing and spatial awareness, executed entirely within the camera without post-production manipulation. The focal shifts create a sense of depth that draws the eye toward a central “source,” echoing the meditative focus of a mandala. This body of work serves as the culmination of the series, where light, time, and motion converge into a singular, sacred geometry.
