A STORYTELLING LENS

THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY, DESIGN AND AN ARTIST’S EYE, SHARON THORPE FINDS NEW WAYS TO HIGHLIGHT THE PEOPLE, PLACES AND TRADITIONS OF THE EASTERN SHORE

For Sharon Thorpe, photography opens a window to explore new worlds. It’s a storytelling medium that exposes viewers to diverse perspectives, new ideas and places they’ve never visited—or places they see all the time but, through her lens, can experience in different ways.

On Maryland’s Eastern Shore, that might mean workboats returning to Dogwood Harbor, watermen carrying on generations of tradition, or a familiar landscape transformed by season and light. Sharon is drawn to these moments, but she is interested in more than merely capturing what she sees. She wants to dive deeper.

Sharon says she is getting more comfortable with the idea of herself as an artist whose foundation is graphic design. In her career, she has moved fluidly from photography to graphic design, collage art and visual storytelling. “I’ve always had an interest in photography, but I like many different creative avenues,” she says.

Increasingly, those disciplines are coming together.

Some of Sharon’s photographs simply document a moment in time. Others become starting points for more abstract work, shaped and reconsidered through the eye of an artist who has spent decades communicating visually.

“I’m working on more abstract, less literal, less pictorial versions of these photos,” she says.

In many ways, Sharon’s work has become an evolving visual archive of the Eastern Shore—its landscapes and working waterfronts, certainly, but also the people and traditions that give its communities their character.

Sharon says, “The Eastern Shore has an inspiring landscape and environment, and it breeds creativity.”