I have been making photographs since I was 13 years old, some 53 years ago, when I discovered magic in the darkroom as images appeared as negatives on film and positives on photographic paper right before my eyes. I have used everything from a Brownie Hawkeye fixed lens snapshot camera to an 8 x 10 view camera in my image making journey. I switched to digital image making about 5 years ago when it became clear that there was nothing I could do in a darkroom that I couldn’t do in my newly discovered Lightroom, in fact, digital image making offered me additional technique that was superior to wet process, not in the final outcome but in the ease of achieving that outcome. Digital imagery has also made color more available as an art form in photography.
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Photography has developed my ability to see, to look at, to gaze, to directly experience the moment of existence that confirms the exteriority of the Absolute Other while scratching at the door of the infinite that bookends existence. The photograph which captures a finite moment, a bounded instant of time as a linear continuum, a recorded trace, an unchanging remembrance of that which once was, a fixed artifact of otherwise fading memory of lived experience, is a record of one’s encounter with an otherwise impossible confrontation with origins compressed into a flat, two-dimensional re-presentation of a particular moment which is always already impossibly and irredeemably lost. Every photograph is a manipulation of, an interpretation of its origins. The very idea that a photograph is not manipulated, that it is a true rendering of something labeled reality, is wrong-headed. The very foundation of the photograph itself, the existential moment captured and frozen for all time, is, itself, a fiction yet the photograph remains the closest concrete trace of the existential moment extant. Photography is reductive, compressive in the sense that photographic images reduce the four-dimensional universe into a flat two-dimensional re-presentation of that which initially disrupted one’s gaze calling for an image to be created in the first place. The photograph appears to freeze a moment in the space-time continuum, the moment being an infinitely brief, unbounded, always already replaced instant of awareness. This existential moment remains behind as a trace, a memory, however faulty, of the moment of awareness that, when strung together with other traces, creates the illusion of a linear, unidirectional flow of time. The timeless encounter with the existential moment is an encounter with the infinite, with the Absolute Other, with Exteriority. The photographic image scratches at the door of the infinite without gaining entrance; the exposure that created the image, while quite brief, is bounded and contains an entire universe of always already replaced moments of encounter. The photographic image compresses time into the appearance of a frozen existential moment. Whenever I can I make a pilgrimage to the American Southwest for the purpose of making photographs. Ever since I was very young I have been fascinated by the landscape of deserts and mountains, wide-open spaces and incredible vistas that are teeming with untold stories of heroism and failure. Born of the clickety-clack of the Santa Fe Super Chief from the time of my earliest memories to road trips following as closely as possible to the mother road, Route 66, cemented by Winter visits to Palm Springs and Indio on the Mohave Desert and kept alive by the memories of Gene Autry, The Lone Ranger, The Cisco Kid, and Tom Mix and further fed by my academic interest in the history of the American Borderlands my interest in the desert Southwest has never waned. Photographs appear to be realistic visual presentations of what was right there in front of the camera’s lens. Nothing is further from the truth. Photographs are not copies of the real, rather they are a re-presentation of the photographer’s vision, both the vision in the moment of exposure and the vision that is constructed in post-exposure processing. I often hear from people visiting my exhibit booth at art fairs, “I took that exact same picture…Only yours is better!” This comment used to raise the hair on the back of my neck until I realized that the difference between a snapshot and a photograph turns on two important skills: Preparation and Gazing. Both of these are learned skills that, when combined with a camera may lead to the production of a photograph. When I read a book I always have a yellow highlighter in my hand. I highlight passages so as to remember, to return to at a later date and probe for more. When I am out and about, trudging through nature, I always have a camera by my side so as to record that which awes me. The images I make allow me to return at a later date and probe for more. While reading or photographing, however, I am engaged, working in the moment, focused on the highlights, the important instances that are the essence of the creative, the meaningful or both. Landscapes, macro landscapes and micro landscapes, are my muse. The image of the Colorado River at Desert View was photographed in mid-morning on January 1st. In this photograph my subject turned away from the Grand Canyon and focused on the Colorado River. One of the few places where the river comes into full view, Desert View offers some a different view of the canyon itself. The narrow ribbon of water flowing toward the Gulf of California is responsible for carving one of the extraordinary landscapes in the world. As such, it is deserving of a portrait on its owm merits. Very little motivates me to get up in the morning before the sun rises on a bitterly cold Winter morning than the anticipation of making an image at or nearly at the precise moment when a sliver of the sun rises above the horizon painting the landscape with a deep, rich, welcoming warm glow. If it were not for photography I would miss many such moments as a direct experience; the best I could hope for might be to see these glorious moments as others saw them, as a second hand partiicpant. |
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