Photography

Statement About Photography

I am a Fine Artist by training and inclination and a self-taught photographer. My initial interest was macro-photography: capturing close up images of natural textures and compositions offered by nature, such as, very small geode slices, melting ice and reeds, blowing sand and grasses, or, perhaps, man made objects being reclaimed by nature. They are influenced compositionally by Japanese prints, British landscape paintings and the Abstract Expressionists. The landscape also caught my eye eventually, most importantly, the upper Mississippi Valley, often using vintage large format cameras. And, more recently, I like what I see in Florida: a very different world, where clouds can rule. My latest discovery is called “Devolution”, which are actual photographs taken over several months from a TV screen which was behaving badly, which got its signal from an old satellite dish. Pay attention to these.

Photography Categories

01

Minor Details

I seek to capture with my cameras natural phenomenon, often very close-up, that mostly goes unnoticed in our normal lives. These photographs are inspired by Abstract Expressionists paintings and historical Japanese drawings. I recall the immediate brushstrokes of, say, Franz Kline with his dynamic and bold compositions, along with the delicacy of Japanese drawings when I capture a still-life image with my cameras. Often there is a good deal of negative space, such as snow, sand or sky that yields a drawing quality.

02

Experimental

I had become captivated by the beauty I happened to see one day in small geode slices; that what I was seeing were abstract microcosms of earthly images: of oceans and landscapes. I bought my first camera, a Minolta with a macro lens with the aim of shooting slides and projecting them on a large screen with music for a rather psychedelic experience. Then came darkroom experiments sandwiching a color slide with a high-contrast black and white negative, and so on. Eventually, some were framed and exhibited.

03

Driftless

These are photographs taken near the upper Mississippi called the “Driftless Region”, an area in SW Wisconsin, NE Illinois and NE Iowa, that somehow last glaciers passed it by and is marked by beautiful rolling farmland and rocky limestone palisades. German and Norwegian farming techniques added to the beauty of the area.The black and white ones were taken with vintage 35mm and 2 1⁄4 film cameras; the color are either digital or film cameras.

04

Devolution

This series of abstract and fantastic photographs is a perfect example of the right person being at the right place at the right time and with the right equipment to digitally capture the bizarre images that appeared randomly on my television.