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About the Photography
Although I took snapshots with an instamatic
camera as a kid, it wasn't until I took a high school photography class and
began shooting and developing my own b&w images that I realized I'd found
what I'd been looking for. I didn't know it at the time but I'd been searching
for a way to express myself. I'd taken lessons in piano, guitar and flute. Tried
dance, track and swam on the swim team. Nothing stuck (though I still have a
guitar and hope to at least master twinkle, twinkle little star some day).
Like many photographers I'm fascinated by the ability to capture a subject and
preserve it on film or paper, to freeze the moment of it's existence in what
amounts to capturing a memory, a feeling or a fleeting impression. It's akin to
magic or alchemy the way light falls on an object, illuminates it's form and
that a camera is able to preserve that brief second indefinitely. Old photos
still exist today that were taken over a hundred years ago, they show us people, places and things that time has
forgotten but there may still
be a remnant in the form of a photograph that reminds us that their existence
was once as real as we are.
Photography is capable of much more than preserving our past and present; it's
just as adept at portraying our emotional, intellectual, physical and spiritual
lives as humans, as any other medium. Just as a painter captures the mood of a subject by the quality of light, color and how the artist manipulates the
materials, the photographer is able to produce the same results by the choice of
subject matter, light and the orchestration of these elements. There
is a kind of magic that happens when peering through the viewfinder , ordinary
things attain a poetic or metaphoric feel. I'm fascinated by that view. It's as
if everything viewed through the camera seems to carry more weight when isolated
within that framework. It forces the viewer to really see what's in front of
them. Like looking at something tiny and insignificant through a magnifying
glass and discovering something you'd never considered before. It's removed from
the realm of the ordinary and set aside for further contemplation.
My approach to photography is very intuitive and personal, I point my camera at
things that interest me or have some kind of meaning though I'm not always
sure why. I don't usually analyze my actions. I guess in a lot of ways I collect
images the way I'm always picking up rocks, bones, old bits of metal,
discarded toys and the like. There is something that compels me to save these
odd bits and pieces of our life here on earth.
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