Artist of the month focuses on Whidbey

Having spent the better part of the last four decades behind a camera, Marianne Borozny spies a lot of what the world misses.

“Sometimes when I’m behind the camera I’m like, ‘Why didn’t I see that with just my eyes?”’ she said. “Our world is so diverse. There’s so much for us to get out there and see.”

Borozny, the Penn Cove Gallery’s artist of the month, captures familiar Whidbey subjects — like the view from Deception Pass Bridge, hay bales dotting Ebey’s Landing National Historical Reserve, the Coupeville Wharf and more — from new and somewhat unconventional angles.

Borozny grew up in New York State and wended her way to Boston as a young adult. Initially, her parents supported her desire to pursue art full-time but eventually encouraged her to seek out another, perhaps more secure, profession. So, Borozny studied nutritional science.

But she could not stay away from art. Borozny’s dad often photographed their family during her childhood, leaving Borozny perpetually longing for a camera of her own. A surprise tax refund bought Borozny’s first camera, a Pentax K1000, shortly after graduation.

She chose the Pentax, a manual camera, because she wanted full control over the settings she used in order to truly understand the medium.

“It was about the time that the automated cameras were starting to come out. So the guys at the camera store in Boston were trying to convince me that I wanted an automated camera,” she recalled. “I was like, ‘No, no, no, I want to learn how to do this.’”

Borozny is self-taught, equipped with a natural instinct for composition likely influenced by her love for drawing as a kid. She began photographing in black and white, but now she typically shoots in color. Cityscapes and landscapes occupy much of Borozny’s photography at present; shapes, textures and lighting are her priorities when seeking out subject matters.

“I am not a methodical photographer. I capture moments, or I see something and I get it. And I don’t love to spend a lot of time on a computer editing,” she explained.

Working in nutritional science moved her across the county, like to the southwest. A photo album on her website is dedicated to pictures snapped in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. Borozny moved to Whidbey in 2002, residing just south of Coupeville ever since. The generally overcast weather on the island suits her photography just fine.

“We do have a lot of gray days but sometimes those gray days can be some of the best days to take photographs,” she said. “I know a lot of people chase the golden light, but color on those days can be so much easier to capture.”

Not until 2017 did Borozny join the Penn Cove Gallery. She finds the dissemination of information among her fellow artists particularly beneficial, especially compared to her experiences in more exclusive art scenes on the East Coast. Artists at the Penn Cove Gallery, she explained, often share insightful observations about one another’s work.

“One of our members … she was like, ‘There’s something about your photography that’s very iconic,’” she recalled. “And I don’t even think she had seen my website, but she said, ‘You capture a distinct place in its purity.’”