Michelangelo said he was freeing the figure encased in the stone. Vivian Schmidt approaches her digital process as an excavation of the spirit of place.

In keeping with the philosophy of Melanie Klein, Schmidt wants to immerse herself in her landscapes but, at the same time, retain their separateness as objects of study – and yes, manipulation.

There is an erotic feeling in these images, like a seduction of the Beloved. When confronted with this new digital work, the viewer is mesmerized into believing the mood she captures is real. In actuality, these works are studies in time and place that require considerable processing to evoke the mood she is after: the transcendence of time and place.

To achieve this, Schmidt -- whose background in traditional photography reflects an upbringing in the splendor of Italy and study in Paris -- approaches her new medium in the tradition of the Great Masters. Trained by Fritz Janschka, a member of the “Vienna School of Fantastic Realism” of the 1940s and 1950s, the artist’s firm grounding of art historical tradition gives her the confidence to surpass beyond it.

Perhaps because she wants to recreate her own romantic past, this artist approaches the digital medium as time traveler, entering a familiar place to connect to its lingering imprint that may not be fully accessible to the retinal eye. Having arrived there, she approaches her subject like an archeologist on an excavation site, bringing embedded geometries and symbols to the forefront of the picture where they serve as gateways to previously hidden realms.

“I see the re-imaging process as akin to stripping away layers of old paint to uncover the masterpiece hidden beneath,” she writes in her statement. “But in this case, I strip away layers of the real landscape to reveal artists’ depictions of places we recognize, even if we have never been there.”

Yet, she always seems to know when to stop the manipulation process. Whether she is striving for the hyper-real or the painterly photograph, the reality she is after is the heightened reality of the dream.

There is a methodical process underlying the choice of subject matter. Early photographs were of architectural elements such as doors, windows, and houses. She captured these stripped-down structural artifacts in various states of decay, focusing her lens on such elements as tumbled-down houses, crumbling walls and flaking wood and resurrecting them for her camera. This evolution is akin to an immersion into the cyclical round of birth/ death/rebirth, capturing a decaying paradigm in preparation for the New.

Having trained her eye to uncover such evidence of history beneath loss, the artist boldly takes on new subject matter that is as broad as the global surface. Her photographs are rooted in a specific cultural tradition; yet they also provide witness to the universalism of the passage of time and inevitable surrender to nature. In this manner, she forgoes realism for a heightened presence incorporating the ghosts of a forgotten past.

By guiding the viewer/participant into penetrating beyond the surface, Vivien Schmidt is a modern day explorer whose memorable body of work brings past into the present, and, conversely, present into the past.

Lisa Paul Streitfeld is a critic, curator and novelist publishing a book about her 21st century art theory. Ms. Streitfeld’s credits include The New York Times and Sculpture magazine among other publications.