Untitled, 2009 by Rebecca S. Horne

I had the chance to meet Rebecca Horne at a portfolio review event a few years ago and was immediately taken with her work, wherein pitchers of water mysteriously empty themselves, a cup of coffee reflects a heavenly vault and paper bags express their previously unseen tragicomic selves. Her visual vocabulary is of the humble and domestic, but her rigorous compositions create a powerful allusive quality. The everyday materials and objects which comprise the subjects of her work are "evocative of raw, organic relationships," as she says, and lately she has begun to include herself in the photos (however obliquely, as above). Painstakingly assembled, the world she crafts is of a slightly surreal domesticity that feels entirely fresh.

Rebecca is also the Photo Editor of Discover Magazine, and has the enviable task of making the latest astrophysical visualizations somehow assort with product shots of clunky-looking scientific gadgets. She uses her blog to muse on her own work (read about her process with the above photograph here), other photographers she admires, and the challenges of forging a distinctive visual style for a consumer science magazine (including this recent favorite, "Why Is Black Hole Art So Shiny?"). Rebecca is a true thinker and photographer whose work lies in the space where personal symbolism and quantum physics intersect.

You can see Rebecca's portfolio here.