A Request for Help On My Upcoming Photo Book

Posted on Oct 16, 2011

In the very near future, I will be publishing a new photography book entitled “The Cultural Landscape”. The book will include photos taken over the last decade or so. Interspersed throughout, will be short anecdotes discussing my philosophy behind shooting, ideas and people that influenced the work, as well as stories of how I came to be in some of the amazing places in the images.

Along the way, I will be posting some of these stories to get feedback before they become part of the final master. So here is the first one. It is the introduction to the book. Read it. Let me know what you think. Criticism is appreciated as it helps to make the best finished product. Well, constructive criticism anyway as comments like “You Suck” or “Did you write that with a pen up your ass” probably arent that helpful.

So here is the Intro:

Since my early childhood, I have looked on the camera as a magical item. I have vivid memories of pulling sheets from my Polaroid camera, taking in the chemical smell, and then watching an image form seemingly from nowhere. Yet, while fascinated by the technology, I never viewed photography as art or means of storytelling. A photograph was utilitarian; the camera a tool; an idea reinforced, although unintentionally, by experiences from my childhood. My father owned a small advertising agency which I used to visit frequently. I would hang around the art department and watch the artists draw and prepare the graphics for ads and product packaging. In retrospect, I am amazed at what could be created without a computer. The designers would start with a hand drawing, and then paint over it with an airbrush, a small tool that uses compressed air to apply paint in fine detail. To add text, the designer would apply “press type”, which consisted of a piece of wax paper with letters from a particular font affixed to one side. These pages filled an entire wall of cabinets for all the fonts and type sizes. The artist would lay the press type onto their airbrushed ad design and rub, leaving the letter permanently affixed. Then additional drawings or images were adhered to clear acetate sheets and layered over each other. Then, the stack of sheets were brought into the darkroom where it would be photographed using a large ceiling mounted camera, and chemically developed and dried. Using these photographs and more acetate sheets of text or other images, the final design could be further refined. This was how I saw photography and its place in society.

It wasn’t until I moved to Soho in New York City that I became continually exposed to photography as art. Soho was an artist mecca, with over 200 art galleries within just a few blocks of my apartment. I slowly began to see the camera as more than a tool. I bought myself an old Nikon FA and started experimenting, but nothing really came of it. Then, I had an epiphany, the kind of shock that in one dramatic moment changes your way of thinking. I attended UNICEF’s Changing the World With Children exhibit at the United Nations. Sebastião Salgado had been commissioned to photograph children from all over the world. They were black and white images, each telling its own disparate story yet woven together to create a larger theme of child poverty. The tonality, smoothness and beauty enhanced the dramatic expression of the subject. I wanted to be able to invoke that power through my photographs, a goal toward which I continue to struggle.

This book represents one step toward that end. It is a collection of images spanning much of the last decade, loosely broken into three categories: Engage, Observe, and Contemplate, each defined by the interaction between viewer and subject. Many of these pieces were originally part of larger artistic themes, others part of specific projects, (both political and social), while yet others were singular events. Keep this in mind as you browse the collection. Think of the images as letter tiles in a Scrabble bag which can be pulled out, arranged to make a word, some replaced, and rearranged to form new words. By mentally reorganizing these images, you might discover some of their original themes or find new expressions of your own. The collection attempts to tell individual stories yet when taken as a whole exposes society’s dual nature; poverty vs. wealth, nature vs. urbanism, civilization vs. isolation as well as the vastness and beauty of the people and places surrounding us. These photographs hopefully provide a small glimpse into the cultural landscape within which we all participate. And, just maybe, they can invoke an emotional response that changes your perception of photography.