Field Notes-3 (2012)

Some images I made in Atlanta that I'm interviewing with many more in the woodshed.  Some are more singular images while others have more of a strait document feeling. To note I enjoyed chatting with many friendly people from the city it is a great town wish I had more time there.  I was also able to spend some time working on the road this summer in Charlotte, Durham, Gatlinburg and Ashville.

I don't think any of these are keepers but I am getting my feet wet with new software, new PC, new OS, add infi-NIGHTMARE!  Yes its Pita time once again.  Wow what a time we live in, it should keep all our brains very sharp.

I have a trip coming up, going to the southwest/4 corners area so that should be interesting. Don't think you will find any great American landscapes from me but we will see, last trip there was an eye opener.

reflections (1977-2005)

WHERE I STARTED & WHERE I AM NOW (2005):

What is interesting to me can be seen in this image and in the opening images of EXCAVATIONS. In these images one can find early threads to much later bodies of work that evolved many years later in PARTICLE POOL (1994 to 2001) and LEELA (2005-). This particular image was made in 1977 at a stage where I understood little about the camera's multiple muscles and had not yet explored any serious photographers work. Which brings up an observation of an ongoing debate in artistic circles, is it better to go it alone and work without respect to the past (study art history) or risk recreating the wheel. 

What would (the above) later bodies of work look like, would they have come sooner, would they be more or less effective had the artist not begun his investigation of art history? Without a study of art history would they even exist? 

Here a question is posed rather than an answer given. Art provides no answers but poses many questions, particularly of the unseen (meditate through the layered veils of Cezanne or feel God in Van Gogh). When your ego comes back in control and tells you it sees paint, you must let go again.

Art for me thrives in small dark overlooked corners where discoveries seem fleeting and are hard won but nothing is ever finished or cornered, authentic journeys are necessary but not necessarily seen, and things out of reach always call and flicker in a darkness one can never fully illuminate. If one could we would lay, rest and have lost all curiosity.

When my eyes opened magic & fear or photo 101

excavation 1977-83, b&w 1994-

EXCAVATION (1977-1983) The b&w images in this group is where my work began, most of these have been informed by my early study of Weston, White and Siskind. Many of the devises I learned from these artists I still use to this day and I continue to expand upon and transform in different ways in all my visual work.

CURRENT B&W (1994-) B&W work in progress, begun as early as 1994 and running concurrently and intermittently to present. This group has bits and pieces from each of my bodies of work so for now we will call it a gumbo until each image has more siblings show up. 

It is interesting to note from 1977 to 1984 I worked almost exclusively in b&w. Then from 1984 to 1994 I worked almost exclusively in color. So hopefully this work has extracted many needed tools from those journeys and others.