Mary Jo Hoffman

Mary Jo Hoffman is an artist and photographer, renowned for her unique and personal engagement with the natural world around her, primarily in North America's Great Lakes bioregion and the iconic scrubland of Mediterranean France. Best known for her multi-year, ongoing project, "STILL," she captures and posts one photo every day, on a white background, of a natural object found near her, whether leaves, flowers, seedpods, twigs, insects, or animals. "STILL" images reflect Hoffman's profound admiration for nature's subtle, seasonal expressions. Her photography encourages viewers to pause and contemplate one thing at a time, to be still, if only for a moment, in a world of distracted hurrying from one thing to another. The project is an endorsement of the power of dailiness, and an invitation to re-see the too-often overlooked "infraordinary," that surrounds us--those sights, sounds, and subtle changes that we think of as common and familiar, but which can come alive with delightful possibility when paid attention to. Hoffman lives in Shoreview, Minnesota, on Turtle Lake, with her husband, Steve, a food writer and author, and her aging and indulged puggle, Jack, with whom she takes walks as often as possible, in woods and fields, and along lakeside trails, on the hunt for that day's STILL blog subject.