Decomposing II. Limited Edition: #1 of 25 Photograph

PHOTOGRAPH THE LIGHT ON THE SUBJECT, NOT THE SUBJECT ITSELF! “Old Wine in New Wine skins”! This retake on the biblical parable seems appropriate for what I do: Bridge the divide between the old and the new, between film and pixels, between analog and digital photography. I make traditional photographs, captured on film and developed with darkroom chemicals, scan them and print them digitally with the same adherence to my original vision as I had in the darkroom. You see, I was late out of the gate; I didn’t pick up my first camera until l981, when I was 54 years old. Photography at first was a hobby, a way to deal with substance instead of the world of words and symbols and ideas in which I had been embedded. I needed something that touched back when I touched it. I turned my full attention to photography when I retired in 2003, after 60 years as a reporter and science journalist and editor. Now I am that hybrid, the progeny of which—old wine in new wine skins, or analog photographs printed digitally—is on view in this exhibit. From the beginning, photography as a craft fascinated me; the work of such 20th Century masters as Weston, Evans, Adams, Stieglitz, Abbot, Atget and others introduced me to photography as an art. I made my photographs with film as fast and crisp as I could handle, light meters, manual cameras of all formats, tripods and a determination to show things as they appeared to my “inner eye” at the time I exposed the film. I am committed to making photographs in ambient light as the only way to show truly how the subject struck me at the time I made the photograph. The prints I make represent that “prevision”. Long after the world had gone digital without me, and my age made long sessions toting gear on the trail and standing for hours in the darkroom more than I could handle, I reluctantly joined the 21st Century in 2013. But a devotion to representational black-and-white photography persisted. A friend has called my work retro, but I believe a photograph should represent my unmanipulated perception of its subject when I exposed the negative. If that be retro so be it. The prints I make now are archival pigment prints on exhibition fiber paper. Most are of scans of black and white negatives made over the years, though a few digital photographs—even one in color, but without manipulation--are included. On exhibit here is a sample, worthy, I hope, of the attention you are about to give it.