photographer arabella paner works within stillness. part of her practice listens to objects, to how light arrives and recedes, to the intervals between what is made and what is remembered. in this conversation, she reflects on the act of waiting, on restraint, and on how even unspeaking forms can return us to ourselves.
? what draws you to photographing objects, and how do you approach bringing still life to life?
arabella: objects for me always carry a lot of memory. of the hand that made it , the light that settled on it once, the quiet or absence of quiet it has endured. I photograph them as an attempt show these. my images of still life I hope can be a way for these objects to confess what its stories and histories are.
? when you worked on the Sieve product shoot, what felt most important to capture about the packaging ethos or its elements
arabella: restraint. Sieve’s design was pared down to a crystalline honesty I wanted to honor. the grain of the postcards and echoes and the magnitude of its words, the soft boldness of the fabric, the caesura marks of Sans Sens, the way the bag held its own quiet authority. frtom what I’ve come to understand, Sieve isn’t only about coffee, it’s about the small many small rituals that surrounds its people. which can also translate as the pause in the day, the soft recalibration of the self. o photograph it felt like keeping company with that pause, like being invited into a moment where even an object can teach you how to be more open with time and how it unfolds.
? what detail in your process might go unnoticed but is vital to you in shaping the final image?
arabella: I wait for the light. I watch light shift across an object until it tells me how it wants to be seen. that waiting doesn’t show up in the photograph, but it is always part of what I hold before pressing the shutter.
we saw in arabella’s photographs more than a frame but companionship as well. in them, the material world feels momentarily porous; fabric becomes a gesture, a surface becomes a story. within sieve’s orbit of craft and care, her work reminds us that attention is its own kind of generosity, and that to look closely is also to keep company with time.
? how do you hope people feel when they encounter your photographs of Sieve for the first time?
arabella: I hope when they see an image of mine for Sieve that they go into a landscape they’ve always held but perhaps forgotten how to enter. some quiet terrain or memory they already carry, or longing, or a sort of 'relentlessness'. I want it to be less to another place than back to themselves, returned in a tender light.
(arabella's photograph of a resident on mt kalatungan from the road to talakag, bukidnon, during our 2025 harvest)
- more of our work together with arabella from product captures to origin images are upcoming. for now, we're grateful to arabella for gifting all our product images were gifted with a lot of affection.
(arabella's capture of mt kitanglad from the road to talakag, bukidnon, during our 2025 harvest)
