LightWork is a series of images that I've been working on for several decades. I find them very "painterly". Lines created in camera are not duplicated anywhere that I know of...and I've tried to paint them but the results of the photos are far superior to anything I can paint. The images here are a new approach for me. They are all triptychs and can be printed very large.
I like that.
All rights reserved.
This is another series I've been creating for about four decades. Here is the forward to a book I published several years ago by my business partner Steve Sixta.
It is a life that we can barely imagine.
Suppose, just for the sake of argument that we lived in a world that was also inhabited by a citizenry of very small people who were constantly running around public places taking photographs.
Now it is probably important at this juncture to define our terms, when I say, “very small people”, I mean very small people…people who, if they were standing next to a loaf of bread couldn’t see over it. We are talking really small here.
Their viewpoint of the world, how they saw things, might well be reflected by the images on the following pages - the renowned places in our lives seen from a totally new and unique vantage point.
Of course to my knowledge these very small people don’t actually exist. Gee I…I don’t think they do anyway. Luckily for us then, we have a full size human being who has had the foresight, taken the time and shown the initiative over three decades to reveal, through his photographs, our world as we have never seen it but as how very small people might. The places that we are so familiar with, shot in a way and from a perspective that we have never heretofore considered. And herein lies the beauty that a singular photographic vision can bring to our lives.
As is evidenced by the photographs in this book, the world is a vast and wonderful place that can be seen and marveled at from any number of angles and positions. Each moment on every place on earth has the potential to be the subject of an interesting or evocative image, captured with a camera wielded by a person possessing a visual understanding far beyond the mere recording of a time, event or place. Great photography brings us this vision. It shows us a world that is new…that is frozen and hence timeless. Great photography records and interprets. It captures a moment and comments upon it. It shows us a different way of seeing the world. Certainly, unless you had the tendency to just lie down in the middle of the most well known public places in the world, you have never seen photographs of such familiar spots like these.
Imagine how many people over the years who, while taking a picture of the kids in front of some noteworthy monument, noticed a man place his camera on the ground and begin to take pictures with it. How many of those people asked themselves, “What the Hell is that guy doing?”.
The logistics are interesting in and of themselves. The camera is placed on the ground with the “photographer’s eye” still high above it. This means that the viewfinder becomes obsolete since you would literally have to place your ear on the ground to be able to have your eye see what the heck you were shooting. So faith, hope and timing play a major role in the recording of images. For darker interiors the floor actually serves a useful purpose, acting as a big flat tripod, allowing for the blurring of motion while stationary objects remain sharp.
Today with digital cameras the results are immediately known…a good shot or a crummy one, but the vast majority of these images were taken using, of all things, film. So the results were only known when the roll was finally developed. It could be weeks until you could see what the camera saw and by then, if the images were of the crummy variety, it would too late to do anything about it. The end product was the creation of a divine technique the result of which was always something of a surprise.
I have traveled quite a bit in my life…been to many of the places photographed on these pages and I have always been entertained by the countless gaggles and hordes of tourists and travelers armed with cameras eager to record their exploits and the places that they visit. At first the weapon of choice was the Box camera, then the Brownie, and the Instamatic…there were Polaroid cameras and disposable cameras and 35mm single lens reflex cameras and later digital cameras. Now (gasp!) we have cell phone cameras. (“I can’t answer that. I’m taking a photo.”) But the goal is always the same—preserve the memory…remember the moment. Make sure everyone looks happy. Nothing more.
The photographs on the following pages have a little more going on in them than that. They open a door to a new way seeing something that we are very familiar with. They make us think…cause us to wonder. They make us laugh and give us a unique feeling of “place.” Individually they are strong images to be sure, but when compiled as a collection, as they are here, they are all the more powerful.
In the end, all I know is, that in my many travels, if I had seen a guy place his camera on the ground and without looking through it start taking photographs I would have stopped whatever silly thing I would have been doing and applauded.
Good job…well done. Now move that thing before someone kicks it.
All rights reserved.