Don’t look for the places, or even the people, in Gabriel Stillwater’s photographs: Each was carefully constructed from his ‘library’ of memories and dreams.

His photographs were never intended to be photojournalism or street photography. They were meant to tell stories. His camera was merely the tool he used to share the stories that he found.

For instance, look at the pictures he made of photo albums. He collected old albums and photographs, but - using the magic of Photoshop - he constructed an entirely fictional world, including his own photographs amongst those in the album and altering faces to make consistent, believable characters who inhabited the new albums as if they had always lived there. In Gabriel’s vision, the photo album was became than just pictures of strangers: it became a story.

Gabriel Stillwater passed away in March 2022. A list of educational institutions and exhibitions cannot capture the essence of this very special person. To him, photography was a kind of alchemy. It allowed him to draw (graphia) with light (phôs). It also taught him how light was related to time, much like the way starlight travels billions of years to reach the Earth. “It is like receiving postcards from the past,” he said. Pure magic.