Throughout my career I have had an enduring love and use of photography in my artistic practice. In this work I became immersed in a world I call intimate spaces. In 2005 I began to develop a body of purely photographic work that takes the viewer into a space of light, air and unfamiliar textures. Using a macro lens to shoot nature subjects from my garden at close range, the images are then realized as large scale photographic works. The images are erotic and sexy, poignant and tender, sometimes abject and unsettling challenging the viewer to experience an image that is not easily defined by familiar landmarks or visual cues. In this work I am looking at beauty, aging, intimacy and subtlety. This new work conveys the essential core that runs through all of my work: the desire to understand a subject intimately and to express my exploration of it visually.

During this time, my mother was struggling with cognitive decline and memory loss. I found solace in my garden observing the cycle of life at close range among the flowers and plants I nurtured and tended. Photographing these plants was a meditative process. As I became more aware of my own mortality I also gained a sense of intimacy and a renewed appreciation of life.

Having distilled my concerns to the most direct method of recording them –the camera—I have discovered a simplicity that seems to function on multiple levels of understanding and observation. There is the initial reading –what is it? where is it? do I recognize this? Then there is a second reading –the metaphor—is it the womb? Is it about sex? death? aging? beauty? I am interested in where that takes you, the viewer, in your life experience and how it might reinforce or support an experience or memory. How does the work might give resonance and meaning to a moment in your life? To me, looking at these intimate images on a larger than life scale signals a deep respect and value for our most private and vulnerable moments and experiences.

Uniting a life long commitment to incorporate a spiritual respect for the world with my subject matter. I wanted this work, Intimate Spaces, to extend and further inform that commitment. At the same time, I was drawing inspiration from the work of other botanical photographers including Anna Atkins, Edward Weston and Sheila Pinkel.

As the Philip D. Nathanson Curator of Photography at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, Linde Lehtinen notes: “I am in a unique position to interpret Macko’s work through multiple pathways related to histories of science, photography, art, and botany. Her close-ups of flora using a macro lens with natural light became the series Intimate Spaces (2008–2012), a response in part to this cherished time spent together in nature [with her mother].”