Statement about photography prior to 2016
The Process
Typically photographs are like windows looking out to an event that occurred at a moment in time, they are evidence of something a photographer saw. I make images in this sense, but it is only a starting place for my artwork. When I compose an image I see the way elements are composed in the viewfinder, but I also visualize how that image could tell a story when placed in relationship to other images. Part of my creative process is juxtaposing images in order to express ideas, tell stories, and ask questions in visually poetic ways.
Cameras, digital and analog, are my primary tools for art making. They allow me to capture, shape and compose presentations of light. Hand craftsmanship is also important to my process. I also use razor blades, X-acto knives, and transparent media to craft my images. With these tools I physically reconfigure and recompose images in order to build a final image. By manipulating images and arranging them within a frame I can create compositions that speak more eloquently than each of its parts could speak individually.
There can also be a digital component to my process. I may start with a digital capture and print a large format negative from the file. I use this negative as a base on which I physically layer other materials. Sometimes I scan the final composition to end up with a digital image. But none of my images are composed or composited in Photoshop. The Photoshop image will never, as Misha Gordin points out, “have the imperfections that makes it alive.” There is evidence of the human touch in the creative process of the crafted image. For my photography that skillful, exacting touch is an essential element in visual quality of my compositions. I believe that physical human contact instills life experience into the prints, which are performances of the ideas I want to express.
The Content
My artwork is informed by my curiosity about light and the mysterious way light displays appearances. I’m inspired to explore, tell stories, to poetically express with images my observations about the mystery of light and appearances. I am interested in the way we experience all the things we see. It seems fascinating that we perceive and find meaning in the wide variation of colors, shapes, and in the play of light and shadow on infinite forms. We somehow absorb what we perceive by consuming light impressions while the mind attaches preferences, opinions, and concrete determinations.
We interact with appearances using all our senses. But what most appeals to me is the way the eyes and the mind work together to capture and collect appearances. Appearances are stored in the mind as images attached to experiences. Those experiences are then, like photos stored in files, committed to memory as information/images. In some ways we are like subjective cameras. Our brains habitually transform, transmute, and recreate impressions of everything we see during the process of storing memories. It seems interesting that we naturally alter the way we see so our experiences will support our beliefs, our individual ways of seeing the world.
Ultimately I want to understand more about the mystery of appearances and the relationship perception has with appearances. As an artist, this topic moves me to investigate and explore my own relationship to perception and the way it influences my understanding of the world. Because I have an appreciation for visual complexity, I want to translate my ideas into beautifully complex, meaning-full images. I sense that craftsmanship and content can lead me closer to some recognition of appearances, not as I perceive them, but as they really are.
The Process
Typically photographs are like windows looking out to an event that occurred at a moment in time, they are evidence of something a photographer saw. I make images in this sense, but it is only a starting place for my artwork. When I compose an image I see the way elements are composed in the viewfinder, but I also visualize how that image could tell a story when placed in relationship to other images. Part of my creative process is juxtaposing images in order to express ideas, tell stories, and ask questions in visually poetic ways.
Cameras, digital and analog, are my primary tools for art making. They allow me to capture, shape and compose presentations of light. Hand craftsmanship is also important to my process. I also use razor blades, X-acto knives, and transparent media to craft my images. With these tools I physically reconfigure and recompose images in order to build a final image. By manipulating images and arranging them within a frame I can create compositions that speak more eloquently than each of its parts could speak individually.
There can also be a digital component to my process. I may start with a digital capture and print a large format negative from the file. I use this negative as a base on which I physically layer other materials. Sometimes I scan the final composition to end up with a digital image. But none of my images are composed or composited in Photoshop. The Photoshop image will never, as Misha Gordin points out, “have the imperfections that makes it alive.” There is evidence of the human touch in the creative process of the crafted image. For my photography that skillful, exacting touch is an essential element in visual quality of my compositions. I believe that physical human contact instills life experience into the prints, which are performances of the ideas I want to express.
The Content
My artwork is informed by my curiosity about light and the mysterious way light displays appearances. I’m inspired to explore, tell stories, to poetically express with images my observations about the mystery of light and appearances. I am interested in the way we experience all the things we see. It seems fascinating that we perceive and find meaning in the wide variation of colors, shapes, and in the play of light and shadow on infinite forms. We somehow absorb what we perceive by consuming light impressions while the mind attaches preferences, opinions, and concrete determinations.
We interact with appearances using all our senses. But what most appeals to me is the way the eyes and the mind work together to capture and collect appearances. Appearances are stored in the mind as images attached to experiences. Those experiences are then, like photos stored in files, committed to memory as information/images. In some ways we are like subjective cameras. Our brains habitually transform, transmute, and recreate impressions of everything we see during the process of storing memories. It seems interesting that we naturally alter the way we see so our experiences will support our beliefs, our individual ways of seeing the world.
Ultimately I want to understand more about the mystery of appearances and the relationship perception has with appearances. As an artist, this topic moves me to investigate and explore my own relationship to perception and the way it influences my understanding of the world. Because I have an appreciation for visual complexity, I want to translate my ideas into beautifully complex, meaning-full images. I sense that craftsmanship and content can lead me closer to some recognition of appearances, not as I perceive them, but as they really are.