New from photo-eye EDITIONS: Ernie Button's Vanishing Spirits - The Macallan Collection

photo-eye EDITIONS New from photo-eye EDITIONS: Ernie Button's Vanishing Spirits - The Macallan Collection photo-eye is excited to announce our sixth photo-eye EDITIONS publication, Vanishing Spirits: The Macallan® Collection by Ernie Button, as well as a corresponding exhibition in our Gallery Tower. photo-eye EDITIONS are exquisite handcrafted limited edition portfolios produced at photo-eye Studios in Santa Fe, NM.

photo-eye is excited to announce our sixth photo-eye EDITIONS publication, Vanishing Spirits: The Macallan® Collection by Ernie Button, as well as a corresponding exhibition in our Gallery Tower. photo-eye EDITIONS are exquisite handcrafted limited edition portfolios of contemporary photography contained in an engraved, anodized aluminum box and produced at photo-eye Studios in Santa Fe, NM. The Vanishing Spirits: The Macallan® Collection portfolio is published in an edition of 30 and contains 10 Archival Pigment Prints on Hahnemüle Paper, a title page, a plate list, an essay by Hamidah Glasgow, Executive Director of The Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins Colorado, an artist statement and colophon signed and numbered by the artist.

Ernie Button – Vanishing Spirits: The Macallan Collection 

"Being a whisky drinker and curator, Ernie Button’s Vanishing Spirits brings two of my favorite things together. As a whole, Button’s images speak to the universe, the deep sea, and the world of microorganisms. Individually, one finds a visceral complexity in each photograph, a complexity not unlike what a Scotch drinker experiences in a golden glass of Macallan.

There are images in Vanishing Spirits that carry the sense of a fine Japanese print while others seem to be a study of a radioactive cell or deep-sea creature. Macallan 101 strikes me as a fiery planet-like place where the ocean meets the sun, the glowing redness created in that lovely slow burn as liquid is absorbed by the elements.

Ernie Button explores food and drink like other artists explore foreign countries. He finds rare curiosities in unexpected places, like the elaborate structures left behind as Scotch evaporates from a glass. In his focus and attention, the smallest details become clear, capturing the magic of this mysterious and wonderful world."—Hamidah Glasgow

photo-eye EDITIONS with print in HALBE frame and Ernie Button Limited Edition Macallan Scotch (sold separately) 

In 2014, Button was contacted by The Macallan to produce a suite of images for their Masters of Photography collection. The 10 images in the photo-eye EDITIONS portfolio come directly from this group of photographs and were made between 2010 and 2014. The Macallan eventually used Button's imagery to create a limited edition scotch bearing the artist's name.

"I have my wife to thank for Vanishing Spirits"

Ernie Button

"I feel fortunate that I stumbled onto this phenomenon. The Vanishing Spirits project really distills whisky down to its essence, essentially its DNA. Through the many years of working on this project and the recent research completed by the Complex Fluids Group at Princeton University in New Jersey, it has become apparent that the rings and lines are visible due to the unique components of whisky and the years it spends aging in a wooden cask. Without that marriage of ingredients, there is no Vanishing Spirits project. Whisky is as much a product of the wood it ages in as the distillate, and the use of quality oak wood casks insures that these images can be created time and again, leaving all of us one more way to enjoy a fine whisky.

The Macallan and Ken Grier, director of Malts at Edrington and the creative guardian of The Macallan’s photography collaborations, have been bold supporters of the photographic arts.  The Macallan Masters of Photography program lets fine photographers do what they do best; make artwork as only they can.  What I do with the Vanishing Spirits project is equal parts a celebration of the wonderfulness that is whisky and the beauty and transformative power of photography."—Ernie Button

Ernie Button’s images have been exhibited widely both nationally and internationally including the Lishui Photography Festival in Lishui China, Soho Photo in New York City, and The Camerawork Gallery in Portland. Button is a Photolucida Critical Mass Finalist, has been invited to Review Santa Fe and has received a number of grants including awards from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and the Phoenix commission on the Arts. The Vanishing Spirits series has itself received coverage from notable publications such as The New York Times, National Public Radio, The Huffington Post, Scientific American, and The Smithsonian. Ernie Button currently lives and works in Phoenix, Arizona.

View the photo-eye Editions portfolio – Vanishing Spirits: The Macallan Collection

View More Images in the Vanishing Spirits Series

Read the interview with Ernie Button

The photo-eye EDITIONS portfolio Vanishing Spirits: The Macallan Collection is available today Wednesday February 16, starting at $1500 for the first tier. 

For more information, and to purchase the publication, please contact Gallery Associate Lucas Shaffer at 505-988-5152 x 114 or lucas@photoeye.com