Extracts

Found by walking

Is it possible to experience a photograph if we have no location as a reference? This was the question that revealed itself while editing this body of work.

A close examination of 30 years of negative files revealed far more abstract work than I had remembered . The making of each one was still fresh in my mind along with the sounds, the memory of what the light was like on that day. But as I worked through them appeared as answers without a question. It is common and normal to look at a photograph and then ponder its location. I’ve observed people who look at location first before viewing the image — the visual equivalent of salting your food before tasting it.

The images in this body of work were being saved for the end, the last portfolio before I go into the “Final Wash” as Adams used to say. I began working in projects vs. single images in the early 2000’s and there are plenty of long term projects in various stages of completion waiting in the files for a voice. After all they are all “works of genius” until you print them. Once edited and printed as test prints, I knew this body of work would get done first.

Removing the nature work (likely portfolio of its own) lowered the count from 157 images to 120, sifting through that group to arrive at 80 was easy if I treated them like they were not mine. Editing from 80 to 60 images was the equivalent of throwing your children out of the lifeboat and more than once, sleeplessly second guessing myself, I went down to the studio to trade out one for another.

“It’s not the destination but the journey that matters.”

Some of the images in this project are very simple, always the hardest pictures to make (also true in music and writing) —others complicated, rewarding the viewer on the 5th or 10th time with subtleties unnoticed during the first view. In all of them, line and form outweigh “what” it’s “where” becomes moot. A secondary but important thread binding them together is the fact that every Extract was not the picture of the day, not what I set out to make, and not visible until I started walking.

It has been said that it is not possible to make abstract photographs, nature having already made every pattern possible. I think that where we stand, how we place the subject in the viewfinder, and the emotions assigned in the exposure and printing reveal endless possibilities even if we are just extracting from the visible.

Extract Portfolios

"Sifting" through the work for Extracts certain themes or directions would rise to the top. Some worked, others were better as stand alone images. When a thematic group of images were stronger as a body of work I began to edit and sequence them as a stand-alone body of work. There are two portfolios that work together as groups and are offered as boxed portfolio sets.

Extracts Portfolio I

Extracts Portfolio II

Ascent/Descent

Even though I have found myself drawn to rugged high altitudes I have spent most of my life in flat lands. Before my first Grand Canyon hike in 1989 time spent researching the trails indicated clearly that I would need to prepare for the frequent and intense elevation changes I would encounter. Living at that time in southern Michigan, there was no terrain even close to this that I could use to replicate what I would encounter. The next best thing I found was the stairwells in local parking garages — perfect for conditioning my legs and also to simulate the changes that repeated ascent and descent involve. I was not making photographs of stairs then but there was something inherently comfortable about the rhythm and cadence of stairways that felt familiar. Anyone who has devoted themselves to playing a musical instrument, playing the same piece over and over, probably feels this when they find themselves taking the stairs. Good music and dewriting rely as much on cadence and rhythm as they do on notes and vocabulary (and the spaces in between!). It is no surprise that well crafted visual art benefits from the same principles.

Extracts Portfolio II

Extract Single Images