"Richard Youse's House #1" Photograph

I am a fine art photographer from Fort Wayne, Indiana. I was born here in 1975; and this northeast Indiana city has been my home except for a year and a half spent in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

My work is primarily documentary in nature. I am a historian as well as an artist, and my interest in the past drives much of my work. Photography has allowed me to explore the world around me in a way that few people do. We live our lives surrounded by the evidence of the past. Old buildings stand as monuments to lives lived long ago, and old people are living witnesses to history.

Every year, I see the world around me change. Buildings demolished, new ones built. People die while new lives begin. Open a history book, and you'll read hundreds or even thousands of pages of text about the wealthy, the famous, the powerful, the important. What of the silent masses, whose lives are the backbone of civilization? I tell their stories with my photographs and my writings.