For most of my career I have pursued perfection in my imagery. I studied Ansel Adam’s zone system in an effort to master the medium of black and white photography. I even learned how to create unsharp masks in the darkroom to enhance image clarity.
While I achieved technical precision with that medium I abandoned it for digital photography in an effort to achieve even greater levels of technical precision in my imagery. I felt like Photoshop empowered me to have total control over tonality and sharpness.
Unfortunately I remained disappointed with my work. Technical precision did not produce the powerful emotional impact I was seeking to create. My final image didn’t express my deep emotional experiences that had inspired the work in the first place.
This led me to researching creativity and to examine the limitations of the medium of photography. Through this I began creating composite images that allowed me to create dream like images that I felt were starting to express my emotions. I also utilized digital technology to create large bold canvases that I thought were beginning to feel more authentic to that gut instinct and and visceral response I had to the subject.
But there was still something missing. I still wasn’t having the kind of reaction that I experienced when looking at a Van Gogh painting. Without going into a lengthy essay I will tell you that my love of Van Gogh’s work led me down a path of discovering Asian art and Chinese and Japanese landscape painting in particular. What I learned from this was that these artist were not try to depict nature but were instead try to express their emotional reaction to nature. Instead of attempting precision they were creating expressive brush strokes.
My love of their work led me to exploring contemporary photographers like Daido Moriyama who eschews technical precision and utilizes small handheld photographs to create raw and intimate images. Coming full circle back to the West I see a similar emotive quality to the work of William Klein.
Along the way I have uncovered books that had laid dormant on my shelves gather dust that have refined my ideas about landscape photography. Eddie Ephraums’ Creative Elements book surprised me at just how beautiful 35mm film photography can be.
In a Zen like dialectical opposition of refinement and raw emotion I am continuing to work on these ideas in my artwork. While I continue to refine my platinum printing techniques I am also returning to film and street photography using small handheld cameras.
Here are some of my influences.
To balance out the intensity of urban life I recently started watching old episodes of Bob Ross. His wet on wet painting style turns blobs of color into images that are expressive of his emotional response to the work. In his work I see the connection to Van Gogh and to Asian landscape painting. There is a unifying theme that is present in all these works and I feel it entering into my own practice. It is an exciting journey.
“Talent is a pursued interest”
Bob Ross
