Craft

“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” (Gustav Mahler)

The craft of making, rather than taking, a photograph can be refreshing.  And it fits well with my desire to create images of the natural world. I view a photograph as a form of expression, a performance, as Ansel Adams said. As a result, my process places significant emphasis on how the image is printed. This is a natural extension of my fascination with film cameras, ranging from vintage 35mm cameras and lenses, to medium and large format cameras with a range of vintage lenses. The tonalities of images on silver gelatin film and paper are different from those captured by a digital sensor. Theoretically, it should be possible for a digital process to duplicate a film image, but the craft is different. I love the pace of the analog process and the look of handmade prints. The so-called “alternative” processes give me a very different print tonality and texture that seem natural and human. The earth pigments and metal are embedded in the paper and, when they work well, they allow for a sharpness, depth and three-dimensionality that is unique and undeniably handmade.  That is my goal.

Music and Photography

A number of well-known film photographers were musicians (e.g. Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock, and Paul Caponigro). Ansel Adams occasionally used music analogies to explain his approach to photography. There is the famous quote where he stated that the negative was the score, and the print was the perfomance.  In another quote, he compares the zone system to the keyboard: “The piano has 88 keys, and you have to be able to play all of them. And the range of white to black is analogous to the 88 keys.  You have to be able to play all 88 keys in that palette from white to black.”  For me it is the imperfections of the historic keyboard instruments that continue to make them such glorious instruments, and it is the craft and imperfections of vintage cameras, lenses, film, and historic printing processes that provide a unique surface for saying what I want to say.