Biography

I came to photography from painting. I had a reasonable proficiency with technique but was having trouble seeing strongly. Photography seemed a good way to grapple with that. I was using a 4x5 camera and in a fit of chiding myself to be more organized, I was making contact sheets for my files one day. I realized that the contact prints looked exceptionally good. I tried making enlargements to match them and could not. The enlargements were good but the contact prints had an eluive quality – a quality I wanted in my work. Shortly thereafter I started using an 8x10 camera exclusively. I stumbled across Michael A. Smith’s writings and the story of Azo contact printing paper. The tests I ran convinced me that Azo was something special. That rounded out the materials and technique end of things. I use an 8x10 camera and sometimes use widgets such as reducing backs to make 5x7 and 4x10 photographs. I develop my film in pyrogallol and make silver chloride contact prints developed in amidol.

I’d enjoyed coming to grips with the photography of the past masters but was particularly drawn to Edward Weston’s work, especially the way it evolved as he continued working. Getting to know Michael A. Smith and Paula Chamlee and learning from them was important to me as well. The straightforward technique and seeing, and just meeting two people like that was a big help in clarifying things for me.

Photography provides a way for me to experience certain moments that are not articulated but felt. I’m somewhat agnostic about subject matter, although I do enjoy spending time in the wild places. My interest is in experiencing visual connections and relationships by the act of looking. To that end, it is not the subject per se that interests me as much as the visual interactions that make up the subject. Ideas related to interval and spacing are as important to me as notions of figure-ground relationships or form. So, I guess my interests are very much modernist in scope. I do not make photographs to be enlarged but see them as contact prints from the beginning. I believe no element in a photograph should be superfluous – that is, every element needs to serve some visual purpose. Given my interests, it becomes important to experience a certain clarity at the moment of seeing.

Much of my work has been done close to home, although on occasion, and with increasing frequency, I make trips to places farther afield.

Artist Statement

These are contact prints on silver gelatin paper—they are made by having the negative in contact with the printing paper. This requires that the negative be the same size as the print, which in turn means that the larger the prints you want to make, the larger the camera that is required to make the larger negative. There are many processes, now probably regarded as arcane knowledge, that rely upon contact printing: platinum, palladium, Van Dyke, Kallitype and so on.

Why contact prints? A contact print provides the greatest fidelity in the photographic process. Since the photographic image does not pass through a second optical system (in the enlarger) withall the attendant losses, a contact print provides an exceptional sense of sharpness and preserves the micro-tonalities that are such an integral part of the photographic image. Finally, working with the knowledge that the final print will be the same size as the image seen on the ground glass of the camera provides a very direct form of seeing. Since the process eschews cropping, it naturally entails a certain clarity of vision at the time of making the exposure.

The prints are made on the last of the silver chloride papers. Silver chloride papers are very “slow” and cannot be used in an enlarger since the exposure times for each print would be interminably long. Like most silver gelatin papers, silver chloride papers produce rich blacks but they also provide the long tonal scale of alternative processes such as platinum prints. In other words, making contact prints on silver chloride papers provides me with the characteristics I value and allows me to make the most beautiful prints I can.

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