Feb 25, 2013 | Portfolio
I don’t know why I have taken so many self-portraits or what meaning they might have as photographs. But I have been taking them steadily since I first started out as a photographer in 1978. Many of them were/are reactions to conscious or unconscious stimuli, moments presented when the camera was ready. Others were set-ups, experiments with equipment and/or printing processes, attempting new techniques. And some were made out of reflex and habit to satisfy the urge to click the shutter, not to make any type of statement.
Self-portraiture confuses me. Like many people, I rarely like a photograph of myself and feel self-conscious when a camera is pointed my way. I would much rather take responsibility for making my own image and the consequences incumbent upon it. As I edit the self-portraits, I try to forget that these are in fact photographs of me and choose images that I like, that are able to stand alone. I continue to make self-portraits and will post new ones as they are made. These images were made with a wide variety of cameras and printing techniques. Some are one of a kind and have been sold. Many were printed from black and white negatives and are available in limited edition silver gelatin prints. Many are digital based images and are available in editions of 15. If interested, please inquire about pricing and availability.
Feb 25, 2013 | Portfolio
I went to Italy in 1998 for seven weeks. I photographed daily and made about 4000 images on film with 35mm and medium format cameras. We lived in a small village in northern Tuscany up in the hills with beautiful light, great food and long days of exploring, napping and shooting. I realized early on that I was looking for an Italy that I had visited in the early seventies, not one full of tourists, but one with timeless architecture and beautiful landscapes. I found this in the Tuscan hills and when I came home, I spent a year printing and editing the images. I ended up with 40 photographs that were important to me. These images have been exhibited widely and were printed in an edition of 10. All were printed on semi-matte silver gelatin paper and toned in homemade sepia toner and gold chloride for maximum longevity. An article about the printing and toning process appeared in the World Journal of Post-Factory Photography, #7, titled the Power of Gold. Most of the images are sold out in the silver editions, a few are left. All are available now as digital prints. Some are still available in the edition size of 16 x 20. Please inquire.
Feb 25, 2013 | Portfolio
For several years I wore an 8x loupe around my neck almost every day. I initially used it to examine negatives and contact sheets for my darkroom work. As time went on and my close-up vision grew less reliable, I started to use the loupe for many different purposes, from examining my daughter’s cuts and scratches to finding telephone numbers in the phone book. What I explored under the loupe expanded as I used it to look closely at the little things in the world I couldn’t see clearly. The loupe became an intrinsic part of my visual field and I fell in love with the way everything looked through it. At the same time, I had become involved with pinhole photography, including teaching the fundamentals with simple, homemade cameras. My students and I made lots of cameras. One night I had a dream and I realized that I could attach the loupe directly onto the pinhole and perhaps capture what I was seeing under it.
My first experiment was an image of a butter knife on a cloth napkin, and was taken with a paper negative and a cardboard camera with the loupe duct-taped onto front of the pinhole.
It worked and I felt like a new world in photography had opened up for me. These images in this portfolio are from the pinhole/loupe experiments over a period of about five years. All of them were taken with a 4 x 5 inch pinhole camera with an 8x loupe attached, exposed onto Black and White sheet film and then developed in a dusty basement darkroom. They were made in the spirit of experimentation that has been a part of photography since its beginnings.
I have long been interested in photographing still life and worked with a regular 8 x 10 inch camera to do so in the past. With the pinhole/loupe combination, I could not see these tiny still life images when they were in front of the camera and the shutter was ready to be opened. I was never sure how much of the subject will translate on to the film. The process was fraught with mishap and happy accidents. The loupe showed me a small slice of the world within which existed light, drama, tension and moment, with careful focusing non-existent.
These “LoupeHoles,” were a way into a world that had been right before my eyes all the while. I hope that they amuse, frighten, entertain and inspire the viewer to look more closely at the throwaways in life—the little things around the house that are swept out the door and forgotten.
The images were enlarged onto 16 x 20 fiber-based gelatin silver paper and toned in selenium, gold and/or blue toners. Six of them are in the collection of the Pinhole Resource www.pinholeresource.com and have been featured in the Pinhole Journal (Volume 20, #2) and one, The Point of a Pencil, was published along with a my short essay about the technique I used in Pinhole Photography: Rediscovering a Historic Technique, Eric Renner, editor. They have also been published in Cambrea, A Photographic Journal of Life and Liberty of Views. and five of these images are in the pinhole collection at the New Mexico State History Museum in Santa Fe, NM. All images are available in a limited edition of 10. Please inquire about print prices and availability..Some silver prints remain. But all images are available digitally. The featured image is called Queen of Christmas.
Feb 25, 2013 | Portfolio
These images in the portfolio called Squares were made over the last 20 years during various road trips. For me, the road trip represents time to get lost, to drive with and without an agenda, to shoot and dream and nap and eat in the car. The prints have been produced mostly from scanned 35mm film negatives (with some digital capture) on rag paper with archival inks. Image size is 4.75 x 4,75 inches on paper that is 8 x 8 inches. Prints are ready to frame, signed and editioned by the photographer. The edition for all images is limited to 15. The prints are priced at $75.00 plus postage, shipping and WA state sales tax. The featured image is the Owl Club from Austin, NV at the eastern end of the loneliest road in America.
