Artist Statement

My commercial work consists of environmental and studio portraiture. I work to capture the emotional beauty of every person I photograph.  I use both film and digital techniques to create the look that is desired in the final images.  I create each photograph to be a keepsake, a memory of a time, place or event.  In each session, my goal is to capture the beauty and essence of my subject.  As an artist, the emotion and essence of the subject is what I seek to obtain. Most of my clients are from recommendations of previous clients.  This is testament to the care and quality I put into my work.

My fine art work is based in alternative photographic techniques such as gelatin-silver, Cyanotype, Kallitype and VanDyke brown, platinum and palladium. I am interested in creating images that portray shapes and textures that are in harmony with nature or that provide a juxtaposition of shadow and light that motivate the viewer to examine objects in more detail than they would normally.  One of the techniques I have been using is that of the photogram. The very first photographs, created when photography was in its infancy, were photograms of natural objects  [www.photograms.com].  The photogram can reveal in exquisite detail the form of an object and its interaction with light that we ignore in our daily lives.  The simplicity of the photogram allows us to visualize objects in more detail than is usually possible – and a way to transform into art that which would normally be a mere trace.  The object and its shadow reveals more than the sum of its parts.  This synergy is what makes it all happen.  If my print can capture the viewer such that they examine the beauty of nature in the image, then I have succeeded.  It is my hope that the object transformed will transcend the method and that the image will remain in memory.

 

“The shadows of our environment are the transient photograms of our perceptual consciousness”

Les Rudnick, November 1994 

 

“The enemy of photography is the convention….  The salvation of photography comes from the experiment”.

Lazlo Moholy-Nagy from Taken by Design




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