John Santerineross, Santerineross III

If the original Symbolist artists hold one central tenet, life is fundamentally mysterious, and artists must both respect and preserve this profound mystery. In both painting and poetry, they insisted on using suggestion rather than explicitness and symbols rather than description. Symbolists believed that "the creation of a mood is as important as the transmission of information; (it must also) seek to engage the entire mind and personality of the viewer by appealing to the viewer's emotions and unconscious mind, as well as to their intellect". The Symbolist painters used mythological and dream imagery; the symbols used by Symbolist artists are not the familiar emblems of mainstream iconography but intensely personal, private, obscure and ambiguous references.

Book specifications

66 elaborate symbolist photographs created over the past 23 years
A4 210x290mm (8.26 x 11.4 inch)
144 pages
Hardcover with a flat back
Printed on high-quality 170gsm silk art paper

Release date 21 July 2023

About the artist

John Santerineross (born John Douglas Hernandez; April 19th 1955) is an American photographer with a background in ceramics and painting. He is considered a neo-symbolist or a black symbolist, as he refers to himself, as an artist that continues or reinterprets the 19th-century art movement Symbolism. Like its predecessor, neo-symbolism focuses on the spiritual, the subconscious, and dreams. Santerineross' unique style and content have inspired a new generation of artists. His complex aesthetic is derived from his exposure to Catholicism and Santeria, his fascination with Greek mythology, and the subconscious ramifications of childhood trauma, world religions, and iconography.