Capturing the essence of an object is no small feat. With glass, this task is even more challenging with every form presenting its own obstacle course of light, shadow and reflection.

Marco Galloway, an ongoing SLJ collaborator, is a photographer who has mastered this medium, beautifully distilling the character of our glass works into portraits that read like still lives, softly idling in time. Earlier this year, he shot, developed, and printed ten pieces from our Tulipa collection on film — a process that’s equally as captivating as glass-blowing — for a catalogue that has become one of our favorites.

For a peek behind the curtain of it all, we asked Marco about how he approached the project:

MG: Sophie and I spent a day in the studio with the collection, taking our time to document each piece as best we could, a lot of rotations to sometimes end up where we started, but the moments spent inspecting were always moments worth taking.

Shown above are two scenes from Marco's studio that show the slow and steady process of color correction and comparison — a process for the patience of saints.

MG: I don’t take the task of capturing an artist’s creation lightly, I know all to well the amount of time, energy and resources that are poured into a single piece to get it ready for public consumption — I try to approach most of my photography in a similar manner.

MG: A decent amount of time elapsed between photographing these pieces and creating the final prints in the darkroom, and I think that’s where the speciality in the medium becomes most rewarding: allowing yourself time. It’s not something easily done when it comes to work, but generally, time serves the creator well — space for rumination and corrections, considerations and iterations. At the end of it you hold something tangible, there’s always room for improvements but when you have it in your end it’s easier to let go of it.

Keep up with Marco's work here and keep an eye out for more collaborations between us coming soon. Subscribe to the newsletter to keep in the loop.