Encountering Regina DeLuise’s visual work is akin to stepping into a sanctuary of stillness, emotion, and timeless grace. Her latest monograph, The Hands of My Friends, serves not only as a visual archive but also as an invitation into an artist’s intimate universe — a space where light, human connection, and the passage of time converge. Rooted in tactile craftsmanship and personal history, this collection transcends mere aesthetics, offering a rare glimpse into the soul of someone who has long practiced the art of mindful seeing.
Traveling from the verdant hills of Italy to the whispering shores of the St. Lawrence River, DeLuise’s work offers more than landscape or likeness; it distills experience into quiet, resonant imagery. This immersive journey explores her creative evolution, the intimacy of her portraiture, the pull of place, and the philosophy that shapes her singular vision. The Hands of My Friends is not just a collection; it is a communion — a textured narrative of memory, friendship, and enduring curiosity.
From Thought to Book: Tracing the Origins of a Personal Milestone
For Regina DeLuise, the idea of publishing a book was long an elusive concept — not because the work didn’t exist, but because it resisted categorization. Her images, created over decades with an 8x10 view camera and printed using the platinum/palladium process, existed more as deeply personal meditations than as a conventional series. The body of work was vast, introspective, and emotionally resonant, yet not aligned with the singular focus that often defines project-based collections. Without a prescribed thematic framework, DeLuise questioned how to shape the intangible into a form worthy of a monograph.
Over the years, colleagues, collectors, and fellow artists would often ask when a book might appear. But the question weighed heavily, not due to a lack of confidence, but because of the burden of integrity. For DeLuise, releasing a book wasn’t about packaging images into a commercially viable product — it needed to emerge organically, mirroring the same ethos of care, patience, and introspection that defined her artistic process. She wanted the final work to carry a soul, not just a structure.
This ongoing hesitation began to dissolve in the fall of 2022 during her exhibition at Rick Wester Fine Art in Chelsea, New York City. The show — a poetic and nuanced arrangement of her visual work — drew the attention of Mark Alice Durant, founder of Saint Lucy Books. Known for his discerning eye and sensitivity to image-driven storytelling, Durant recognized not just the quality of DeLuise’s work but its necessity. He understood that her voice, both visual and written, needed a vessel that could capture its contemplative depth.
A Fortuitous Meeting: The Catalyst Behind the Book’s Emergence
Mark Alice Durant’s response to the exhibition was immediate and wholehearted. He had long been familiar with Regina’s work but experiencing it in person, within the intimate setting of the gallery, offered a renewed clarity. As he left the space and returned to Baltimore, a sense of conviction took hold — not only should a book exist, but it should become a vessel for the unique visual language that Regina had cultivated over a lifetime.
This moment became the catalyst. What had once been a theoretical possibility began to take on shape, texture, and emotional momentum. Durant, whose work with Saint Lucy Books often highlights artists with deeply personal perspectives, approached Regina not just as a publisher but as a partner. Their conversations were not transactional but transformative — unfolding over time with the same sense of slowness and curiosity that defines her images.
Saint Lucy Books offered the perfect environment for this unfolding. As an imprint that celebrates subtlety, complexity, and nuance, it aligned with DeLuise’s sensibilities. Rather than push her work into a mold, Durant encouraged her to trust in the strength of her existing archive. He reminded her that the power of the book lay not in conforming to expectations, but in distilling the spirit of her practice into an enduring, tactile form.
What followed was a deeply collaborative process — one that felt less like assembling a portfolio and more like composing a visual memoir. DeLuise began sifting through decades of negatives and contact prints, reviewing work that had never been shown publicly, and contemplating the quiet dialogues that had been developing between her images all along. She began to notice how portraits whispered to landscapes, how still lifes echoed the gestures of human hands, how one image softened or sharpened the next.
The Dialogic Structure: How Words and Images Found Harmony
As the collection began to coalesce, DeLuise realized that this wouldn’t be a book in the traditional sense. It would not adhere to strict chronology or thematic separation. Instead, the sequencing would reflect her organic working method — intuitive, relational, and emotionally guided. The connections between the photographs, often subtle and spatial, would create their own rhythm. There would be silence between images, breathing room for reflection, and space for interpretation.
Crucially, the project expanded beyond the visual. Words would become an integral element, not as explanations but as extensions of the visual experience. One of the most significant textual contributions came from Felicia McCarren, DeLuise’s longtime friend, muse, and collaborator. Their creative relationship spans over forty years, built on trust, shared journeys, and mutual understanding.
McCarren’s essay, included in the book, is not a critique or commentary. It is a lyrical accompaniment — a personal reflection that parallels the tone of the images. She writes from within the photographs rather than about them, offering poetic recollections of moments shared, of being seen and seeing in return. Her words provide a kind of literary chiaroscuro, adding dimension to the imagery and grounding it in lived experience.
This synergy between text and image elevated The Hands of My Friends beyond visual documentation. It became a holistic narrative — a fusion of interior and exterior worlds, a quiet study in perception, memory, and kinship. The book’s title itself evokes the essential spirit of the project: a tribute to those who have shaped DeLuise’s journey, both in front of and behind the lens.
An Organic Compilation: Shaping a Living Archive of Relationships
In assembling the final sequence, DeLuise took a deeply introspective approach. She returned to her archives not only as a creator but as a witness — revisiting portraits, landscapes, and objects that had once been fleeting encounters and were now tender relics. Many of the images she selected were not made with the intention of publication. They were made because something essential was present — a gesture, a quiet light, a moment worth preserving.
What emerged was a visual terrain rooted in intimacy. Every page holds more than composition — it holds presence. Whether it's a figure leaning softly into light, a table set beneath olive trees, or the curve of a shoulder traced by shadow, each image invites slowness, attention, and reverence. The sequencing is not dictated by geography or narrative, but by feeling — a resonance that lingers as one moves through the pages.
Importantly, this is not a retrospective. While the book spans decades of work, it doesn’t seek to catalog or finalize. Instead, it feels alive — a breathing archive of human connection and sensory perception. It illustrates how DeLuise’s visual practice is not confined to a studio or bounded by subject matter. Rather, it is an extension of her way of being: observant, empathetic, and spiritually attuned.
Through this process, DeLuise also confronted the evolving role of her work in the world. The Hands of My Friends became a reflection on longevity, not just in artistic terms, but in emotional and philosophical ones. It underscored the importance of art as a tether — a means of staying connected to oneself, to others, and to the quiet, often-overlooked details that make life meaningful.
Ultimately, the creation of this book served as a turning point. It was not just the culmination of years of work, but the beginning of a new way of understanding it. By embracing the unstructured and trusting in the power of intuition, Regina DeLuise allowed her work to find its truest form — one not bound by genre or convention, but liberated by authenticity and emotional precision. The Hands of My Friends is not just a monograph. It is a manifestation of devotion — to light, to labor, to relationships, and to the enduring act of seeing with the heart.
Photography as Ritual: Tools That Shape Intention
For Regina DeLuise, the act of image-making is not mechanical—it is devotional. Her artistic method centers on tools that demand attentiveness, patience, and respect for nuance. The deliberate choice to use a large-format 8x10 view camera alongside the labor-intensive platinum/palladium printing process is not merely a stylistic decision, but a profound alignment of medium and message. These traditional, hands-on techniques connect her to the very heart of her subject matter and elevate her entire process into a meditative, almost ceremonial act.
Rather than chasing innovation for its own sake, DeLuise has built a practice rooted in timeless craft. Her work is a quiet rebellion against immediacy. It leans into slowness, and in doing so, it grants her—and those she photographs—the rare opportunity to breathe within the image. The tools she uses are not just instruments; they are extensions of her way of seeing and being in the world.
A Foundation in Drawing: Transferring Gesture to Light
Before her deep immersion into the camera's ground glass, DeLuise began her artistic life through drawing. This initial focus gave her a foundational understanding of gesture, weight, and rhythm. Drawing taught her how to observe, not as a passive viewer but as a participant in the visual field. The eye guided the hand, and through that hand, an emotional connection to form emerged. That tactile, sensuous relationship with materials would later become essential to her camera work.
When she first picked up a lens, DeLuise did not abandon her foundation in drawing—she translated it. The same way a line can define emotion in a sketch, a beam of light could articulate presence through a lens. The physicality of drawing, the slowing down of time to trace a form, closely mirrored the intentionality she later found in platinum/palladium printing. It was a seamless evolution, not a departure.
While still an undergraduate at SUNY Purchase, she was introduced to the platinum/palladium process by artist and mentor Jed Devine. That moment became pivotal. The process opened new possibilities for combining technical mastery with material tactility. DeLuise discovered a technique that felt as intimate and contemplative as sketching in a quiet studio: hand-coating papers, preparing emulsion, working with fine art materials rather than relying on automation. These discoveries aligned perfectly with her deep-seated desire for creative rituals that honored time and attention.
The Large-Format Camera: Embracing the Weight of Stillness
One cannot overstate the significance of DeLuise’s use of a large-format 8x10 camera in shaping her visual and emotional language. This camera, formidable in scale and effort, transforms the creation of an image into a slow and intentional event. It resists impulsivity. It demands presence—from both the photographer and the subject.
Each image begins with a ritual: carefully setting up the tripod, selecting the lens, positioning the film holder, calculating exposure. There is no spontaneity without discipline. The subject must remain still, and so must the artist. The view under the dark cloth is not just a visual adjustment—it is a reorientation to the world, a recalibration of seeing. The composition appears upside down and reversed, demanding the photographer to engage with perception in a new, more intuitive way.
Because platinum/palladium prints are contact prints, they require large negatives that match the final image's size. This technical requirement led DeLuise to adopt the 8x10 camera, but the choice has evolved far beyond necessity. It has become central to her practice, shaping how she engages with her subjects, how she moves through space, and how she builds images that honor stillness.
The sheer physicality of the camera also creates a kind of boundary. It demands patience and vulnerability. The sitter often watches as Regina maneuvers the heavy equipment, creating a choreography that balances technical command with human interaction. This slow dance often leads to deeper moments of trust—moments where the sitter begins to drop the performance of being observed and simply becomes present. The result is a portrait that transcends likeness and gestures toward emotional truth.
Light, Time, and the Sensory Alchemy of Printmaking
DeLuise’s printmaking process, particularly her use of platinum and palladium, is central to the meditative nature of her practice. These printing techniques are among the most archival and enduring in the visual arts. The tones are soft yet deep, capable of infinite gradation. There is an earthy richness to the print that feels more akin to sculpture or drawing than to conventional image reproduction. It speaks of permanence but also of tenderness.
The materials she works with—hand-coated papers, precious metals, sunlight—create a synergy between control and surrender. While she can calibrate exposure and chemistry, the final outcome still holds a degree of unpredictability. It’s a conversation with elemental forces: light, heat, moisture, air. When DeLuise prints with natural sunlight, especially while working in Italy or during artist residencies in Virginia, the experience becomes almost sacred. She is working not just in time but with time, measuring exposure by the angle of the sun, the sharpness of shadows, the resonance of afternoon heat.
This deeply sensory process is a kind of alchemy. The negative meets the emulsion, the emulsion meets light, and slowly, through a series of washes and reactions, the image is born—not projected but revealed. The final print is not glossy or detached; it is embedded in the very fibers of the paper. To hold it is to feel the labor of its making, the presence of the artist, the grace of the subject.
DeLuise often speaks of this process as both satisfying and, at times, maddening. There are no shortcuts. Every stage demands skill, intuition, and faith. But within these demands, she finds connection—to the materials, to her subject, and to the moment being transfigured through layers of silver, platinum, and memory.
A Practice Grounded in Intention, Rooted in Empathy
What emerges from this slow, intentional method is not just a photograph—it is an experience, preserved and made tactile. Regina DeLuise does not seek perfection in the traditional sense. She seeks resonance. Her images are not dramatic or ostentatious; they are quiet offerings, distilled from encounters with people, places, and light.
Her entire artistic process speaks to a larger philosophy: that real presence requires slowing down, that seeing deeply takes time, and that meaningful connection is found in the subtle spaces between technique and intuition. The work is rigorous, yes—but it is also empathetic. Each step, from setup to print, honors the complexity of emotion and the dignity of stillness.
In a cultural landscape saturated with immediacy, DeLuise’s process feels like a return to essence. It invites viewers into a world shaped not by spectacle but by contemplation. It asks them to pause, to witness, and to feel. The technical rigor becomes invisible in the final print, replaced by the soft gravity of attention.
Her ritualistic approach, shaped by years of devotion and refinement, forms a body of work that is as intellectually precise as it is emotionally evocative. It is this synthesis—between tool and intention, gesture and grace—that makes DeLuise’s process uniquely transformative.
The Hands of My Friends stands as a living testament to this enduring ritual. Each image is an artifact of connection, a product of slow seeing, and a result of choosing process over haste. Through her tools, Regina DeLuise has shaped not just a visual language, but a philosophy of presence, labor, and devotion.
Across Continents: Searching for Human Resonance
Regina DeLuise’s visual work crosses continents not as a record of external landscapes but as a navigation of inner ones. While her images span Italy, the United States, and Morocco, they do not operate through the lens of cultural distance or geographical novelty. Instead, her visual sensibility invites viewers into a web of emotional familiarity. DeLuise does not seek the unfamiliar to romanticize it—she seeks the universal threads that tie strangers to one another across oceans, languages, and seasons. Her work is about proximity, even in places far from home.
In The Hands of My Friends, DeLuise resists the categorization of place as merely backdrop. Her locations do not perform as stage sets; they are integral, breathing presences in the emotional ecology of each image. These are not geographical snapshots—they are encounters. They reflect years of travel rooted in lived experience and interwoven relationships. Her images do not claim mastery over place; instead, they reflect a commitment to entering new environments with humility, receptivity, and intuition.
Where many might document the surface of a scene, DeLuise searches beneath it. What she seeks is resonance: the subtle charge of a moment that feels significant without needing to explain why. The countries represented in the book are not stitched together by borderlines, but by shared human textures—skin, shadow, memory, gesture. Each image becomes a soft echo of the last, creating a narrative rooted not in plot but in feeling.
Dialogues of Belonging: Building Meaning Beyond Borders
Within the pages of her monograph, DeLuise brings together scenes from the Italian countryside, American interiors, and Moroccan deserts, among other environments. Yet there is no attempt to contrast or compare these places. They are not ordered by geography but by the emotional chords they strike. Italy is not only a setting but a generative root—an ancestral echo that has shaped much of her worldview. Her time in Florence, Cortona, and the Ligurian coast is rendered through quiet domestic scenes, intimate portraits, and carefully composed still lifes that seem to pulse with a sense of return.
Morocco enters the book through a different channel—one shaped by collaboration. Her long-standing friendship and artistic dialogue with Felicia McCarren brought her into the Saharan dunes, not as a visitor but as a participant in shared experience. These images do not read as travel essays; they are visual poems shaped by long conversations, repeated gestures, and mutual witnessing. The Moroccan images are not defined by the foreignness of the landscape but by the tenderness of presence.
In the United States, DeLuise finds moments of quiet introspection in familiar domestic spaces, riversides, studios, and kitchens. Each locale becomes a mirror. Rather than isolating subjects or cataloging experiences, she finds kinship between people and environments that might otherwise seem disjointed. A chair in Cortona speaks silently to a shoulder in New York. The light filtering through a Roman window carries the same emotional temperature as the sky over the Hudson.
This visual language of belonging across borders is not constructed through repetition but through intuition. The viewer is invited to trace the emotional narrative from one frame to another, noticing not the change in landscape but the continuity of gaze and sensibility. DeLuise constructs not a linear story but a constellation of moments—each held in place by its emotional gravity.
Selective Intimacy: What’s Left Out and Why It Matters
A striking curatorial choice DeLuise made in compiling The Hands of My Friends was to exclude a certain category of her work—what she calls “Photographs from the Field.” These were images made in unfamiliar locations or under different circumstances that, while technically strong, lacked the intimate thread that binds the rest of the book. This decision speaks volumes about her values as an artist.
By removing those images, she emphasized a deeper coherence—one built not on visual variety but on emotional continuity. The book does not strive for breadth in the conventional sense. It is not an anthology of scenes or a retrospective catalogue. Instead, it is a carefully composed sequence that prioritizes depth over scope, echo over impact. The omission of the more observational work allows what remains to speak with greater clarity, precision, and resonance.
This curatorial discipline also honors the integrity of the relationships represented. Many of the people depicted are loved ones—friends, family, collaborators—captured not as subjects, but as presences. Even the few strangers who appear in the book are not portrayed through the lens of distance. They become part of DeLuise’s extended circle, framed with the same softness and dignity as those she’s known for decades.
This decision-making process extends to the still lifes and landscapes as well. Nothing included is incidental. Every detail—the fold of a curtain, the angle of a shadow, the texture of sunlit hair—feels deliberate, necessary. The restraint in her editorial hand allows the images to accumulate power over time, like verses in a long, quiet poem. What is omitted is just as significant as what is shown. The silences between images are part of the language.
The Universal Within the Specific: How Images Transcend Place
The power of DeLuise’s transcontinental body of work lies in its ability to make the specific feel universal. The locations may vary, but the emotional signature remains steady. Her work transcends ethnographic impulse, avoiding the traps of romanticism or objectification. There is no dramatization, no attempt to render the unfamiliar more palatable or exotic. Instead, what DeLuise captures is the soft hum of recognition—the sense that, regardless of where we are, we are all shaped by light, gesture, silence, and the passing of time.
Her visual language is deeply rooted in sensory experience. Viewers do not just see the images—they feel their weight. The wind across a dune, the warmth of a hand against stone, the soundlessness of an early morning room—these are the textures that linger. This sensory saturation is not incidental. It is the result of a method that prioritizes slowness, closeness, and the ritual of attention.
The consistency of tone throughout the book is another marker of DeLuise’s artistic clarity. Whether the image was made in Rome or the Sahara, in Cortona or along the banks of the St. Lawrence River, the viewer is not asked to shift dramatically in emotional register. Instead, they are invited to inhabit a sustained mood—an atmosphere shaped by quiet empathy and refined observation. The viewer moves not across space but deeper into presence.
This ability to reveal the universal within the specific is what makes The Hands of My Friends so enduring. It is not about place, but about the human condition as it manifests in place. Each image becomes a testament to shared vulnerability, to the quiet power of being truly seen. DeLuise does not ask her subjects to perform or to represent. She asks them to be—fully, unguardedly—and in doing so, she gives them a form of visual permanence that feels deeply humane.
Her work offers a rare kind of visual intimacy, one that neither depends on proximity nor collapses distance. Instead, it builds a bridge—soft, sturdy, and silent—between people, across time, and around the globe. The Hands of My Friends is not a book of places. It is a book of presences—each one felt, remembered, and honored.
Capturing Essence: Regina’s Way With Portraits
Portraiture is perhaps the most revealing dimension of The Hands of My Friends. These are not conventional portraits posed for the camera; they are visual meditations on presence, vulnerability, and mutual recognition. Many of the subjects are close to DeLuise — friends, collaborators, family — while others are strangers drawn into her orbit through the mysterious alchemy of shared gaze and stillness.
The large-format camera changes the dynamic between artist and sitter. Its slowness demands patience; its scale commands attention. Yet paradoxically, it also invites the subject to drop their guard. The technical preparation, the conversations beneath the dark cloth, the shared effort in composing the frame — all contribute to a kind of trust rarely present in quicker forms of image-making.
DeLuise often involves her sitters in the process, encouraging them to look through the lens, to understand the inverted image on the ground glass. This engagement breaks down distance and generates a heightened awareness of being seen — not as a performance, but as an unveiling.
The portraits that emerge from these encounters are both tender and dignified. They are less about identity and more about essence — the ineffable qualities of being that linger in a glance, a gesture, the curve of a shoulder. The result is a body of work that feels emotionally archeological, excavating something fundamental and timeless from the everyday.
Italy as a Guiding Thread: An Emotional Return to Roots
Italy appears throughout DeLuise’s work not merely as a setting, but as a recurring character — a muse, a memory, a mirror. The country has been central to her personal and creative evolution. From graduate studies in Florence to teaching residencies in Cortona, and most recently a fellowship at The Bogliasco Foundation, Italy has provided her with not only inspiration but clarity.
Her familial ties run deep. Born to Italian immigrants, she grew up surrounded by cultural artifacts — music, language, stories, photographs — that tethered her to a homeland she had yet to truly know. A formative trip at the age of ten ignited a lasting connection, imprinting the emotional geography that continues to surface in her visual work.
Italy’s influence is both aesthetic and spiritual. The architecture of ruins, the softness of Mediterranean light, the intimacy of domestic rituals — all find their way into her images, infusing them with a sense of historical continuity and reverence. In these photographs, Italy is never just a place; it is a home of the imagination, a grounding point for creative intuition.
Photography as Reflection: A Sensory Medium for Empathy
At its core, DeLuise’s work is driven by a desire for connection — not just with people, but with presence itself. Her process emphasizes the tactile, the temporal, the imperfect — qualities that resonate deeply in an increasingly digitized and instantaneous culture. She embraces the slow unfolding of meaning, the lingering impression of texture, the echo of light caught in paper fibers.
Her use of traditional methods like platinum/palladium printing speaks to her commitment to authenticity. The physicality of hand-coated paper, the nuance of tonal gradation, the permanence of the print — all work in tandem to create objects that hold memory rather than just depict it.
For DeLuise, creating visual work is a form of listening — to the world, to the subject, to her own instincts. It’s a method of empathy, a tactile bridge to the internal landscapes of others. The viewer, too, is invited to slow down, to witness with attention, to feel rather than merely observe.
New Horizons: Looking Ahead After a Season of Reflection
The release of The Hands of My Friends coincides with a turning point in Regina DeLuise’s life. After over two decades of teaching, she has stepped into a new chapter — one marked by openness and experimentation. The process of curating and sequencing the book became a revelatory act, illuminating patterns and connections that had previously gone unspoken.
This project marks not only a celebration of past work but a bridge to new terrain. Though she does not yet know where her creative path will lead, she embraces the uncertainty with eagerness and attentiveness.
She describes this moment as “open sky” — a spacious field of possibility where new ideas can take root. The act of assembling the book has fortified her sense of purpose, reminding her of the quiet power of curiosity, care, and craft.
In The Hands of My Friends, Regina DeLuise has created something enduring — not just for the viewer, but for herself. It is a culmination and a beginning, a richly textured affirmation that art, when born of true presence, becomes more than image. It becomes a life.
Final Reflections:
As The Hands of My Friends finds its way into the world, it stands as far more than a debut monograph — it is a quiet testament to what can emerge from decades of thoughtful observation, deep relationships, and steadfast devotion to process. Regina DeLuise’s work reminds us that artistic fulfillment is not measured in pace, popularity, or perfection, but in the authenticity of what is felt, seen, and ultimately shared. Her images do not shout; they murmur with clarity. They do not impose meaning, but gently offer space for the viewer to encounter their own reflections.
In an age dominated by fast, disposable visuals, DeLuise’s slow, deliberate practice feels like a radical act of preservation — not only of a craft, but of a way of seeing the world. Her commitment to traditional methods like platinum/palladium printing and her use of the 8x10 view camera reflect not nostalgia, but a profound trust in the tactile and the real. The resulting images are imbued with subtlety and soul, layered with textures that the eye may not immediately register but the heart quietly receives.
The book also reveals the power of relationships — those that span decades, like her collaboration with Felicia McCarren, and those born in fleeting encounters with subjects whose images remain eternal. In DeLuise’s hands, the camera is not a device of control but of communion. Her portraits are not performative but participatory, created through mutual curiosity and tender exchange. The people and places she photographs are never isolated; they are connected by light, memory, gesture, and a shared moment of vulnerability.
Looking forward, Regina DeLuise stands at a threshold — no longer confined by the rhythms of teaching, she steps into an expansive future shaped by freedom and renewal. With The Hands of My Friends, she has created not just a collection of photographs, but a profound articulation of presence — a body of work that resonates like poetry, rooted in quiet revelations and the enduring beauty of human connection. It is a gift to those who seek depth in a distracted world, and a promise that attentive seeing will always matter.
