Bio and Artists’ Statement

Sandy King is an architectural and landscape photographer who works primarily with large format and ultra large format cameras. He is the author of numerous published studies on alternative printing processes, including The Book of Carbon and Carbro: Contemporary Procedures for Monochrome Pigment Printmaking, 2002. Sandy has a Ph.D. in Spanish Language and Literature and was for many years a Professor of Spanish at Clemson University. His research focused on the history of photography in Spain, and he has published several books in the area of Pictorialism. He recently retired from Clemson University, but still resides nearby in Easley, South Carolina.

Although Sandy’s work has been influenced by several important traditions, including Pictorialism, his current thinking about photography is much more in tune with the aesthetic principles of what was known in the earliest days of the medium as the neutral vision. The camera lens is an artificial retina capable of revealing to us things independent of our senses. He feels a strong affinity with the school of straight photography, whose members, particularly Paul Strand, held that photography has certain basic qualities which, derived from its technical parameters, endow it with a specific mission and impose on it certain mechanical principles. Photography, then, has an essentially objective way of presenting that is directed in large part by the magic of the lens in its ability to gather light from objects in the world and expand this image to a detailed and precise rendering of nature. The most essential nature of photography is that it always begins with something that exists in nature, and this for Sandy is its greatest strength, though not its only one, and it is what sets it apart from other manifestations of the Visual Arts.

Guide to Images for Sale

All prints are hand made with the carbon transfer process, by contact printing either in-camera negatives or digital negatives especially prepared for the process. Carbon transfer is considered by many to be the most stable and beautiful of all photographic processes. The image, which consists of a pigment in hardened gelatin, has a highly distinctive surface texture that results from the relief. In most of my work I try to optimize the relief effect. Carbon prints can be of any tone or color, though I tend to favor one of three colors: neutral blacks made up of lampblack, warm blacks that consist of lampblack plus some umber, and a reddish brown color that looks a bit like gold-toned albumen. All of my carbon transfer prints are hand-made from carbon tissue that I make myself.

Price includes matting on Art Core archival matte boards, 4-ply matte and backing, and protective clear plastic covering. Print sizes noted are actual image size. 5X7” prints are mounted in 11X14 board and the larger ones in boards sized to leave at least two to three inches for the print to breath. All of the prints offered in 5X7” size are available by special order in 10X14” image size, at $950, and in 12X17” size for $1200.

To see Sandy's images in our online gallery, click here.

To contact Sandy via e-mail, click here.