ARTIST'S STATEMENT
Having studied with Larry Fink and other photographers of people, my initial work in photography seemed to naturally involve social documentation. However, about eight years ago I began to search for a way to use the materials of photography to create a body of work that would more deeply reflect my personal artistic sensibilities.
I found this in the freedom to create images without a camera. My first cameraless photographs involved the use of inks, parts of old photographic images and other materials to make masks which I placed over photographic paper to make photograms.
For the past five years my work has involved the creation of unique cameraless silver images by application of chemicals to black and white photographic paper. These chemicals effect the paper’s response to light. Varying the concentration, flow, and time of contact of the chemicals with the paper allows me to control the lightness, color tone, and composition of the final image. I have also developed a method to keep the chemicals from penetrating to selected areas of the paper, allowing me much greater control of mark making and image creation.
This work brings together the aesthetics of abstract painting and print making with the materials used in the process of photography. Utilizing the unique action of light and chemicals on silver gelatin photographic paper allows me to create images that are neither classical photographs nor paintings or prints, but a marriage of aesthetics and technique that lead in a new direction.
Inherent in my work is balancing control and chance in much the same way an abstract painter uses control and chance in making a brush stroke. It is my intention to inform and energize the final image with a sense of risk taking, with evidence of process, and with strength of gesture.