Issue link: http://www.wacmagazine.com/i/1542879
WINTER / SPRING 2026 11 first take If you saw Dinah Satterwhite crouched in the corner of Rome's Colosseum, crystal ball in one hand and camera in the other, you saw right. She's not casting a spell, although the photog- raphy she captures with the reflective orb is akin to magic. Come see Satter- white's mind-bending photos in the Grand Staircase Gallery starting this February. Satterwhite oen shoots landscapes and architecture through a four-inch crystal ball as well as composing ab- stract images that involve long expo- sures. e ball pulls larger-than-life scenes—like the sweeping landscapes of Glacier National Park—into tiny, inverted images contained completely within their own crystalline world. "I love scenery, but so many people do that," Satterwhite says about her glass-ball photos. "It's magical be- cause it's upside down, but it's realistic because the scenery is there. It's a very stylized way to work." Satterwhite brings flair to her abstract photographs, as well, created by holding her camera's shutter open for a few seconds as she sways and spins in the forest or on the beach. e results are mysteriously so swaths of color and blurred natural elements that remain crisp enough to lend an almost painterly quality to her work. She'll shoot thousands of photos in a session, meaning that what you see on display is literally a single snapshot of her finest work. "I can only put out there what is beyond good to me," she says. "I love to have a little emotion and to stop people in their tracks. My goal is to have someone come back to my work and wonder what's grabbing them." Find out for yourself when you walk through the Grand Staircase Gallery now through April. C O U R T E S Y D I N A H S AT T E R W H I T E Crystal gazing See Dinah Satterwhite's otherworldly photography in the Grand Staircase "Black Rock Sunset"by Dinah Satterwhite was shot at Glacier National Park in Montana. grand staircase artist