I have printed an image I made out on Sandy Neck Beach in West Barnstable that was originally exposed on 4×5″ color negative sheet film. I composed the image on 8 sheets of film that line up in sequence to show a panoramic view covering a bit more than 360 degrees. I’ve edited out one end piece for the show. It makes the image stronger. The negatives were scanned and digitally printed at Bob Korn Imaging last week, and they are beautiful. Bob Korn is a MASTER printmaker, and I am extremely fortunate to be working with him.

There is an opening at the Conservatory on Sunday, December 6 from 3-5 pm. Everyone is welcome!

Here is a small version of the big Sandy Neck image followed by the statement I wrote for the show…

Sandy Neck Beach Sunset

The Golden Rope Artist’s Statement

I had a dream the other night about golden rope. I knew that the symbolism in the dream was related to my upcoming show of photography at the Cape Cod Conservatory. I had been thinking a lot about what I wanted to do with this exhibition, and what you see is what I came up with. The golden rope signifies the connective fibre running through all the evolutionary phases of my creative vision.

My first idea for this show was to present a retrospective of my work over the past 25 years of making photographs. I planned to begin the show with some of my early black & white work made in a street journalism style. These images were very much inspired by the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, the man who gave voice to the concept of the ‘decisive moment’. Cartier-Bresson carried a 35mm Leica camera with him everywhere. Once, at a formal dinner seated with many other people he was asked by a fellow diner, “What is the decisive moment?”. He said, pulling his Leica from his dinner jacket, “This is”, and immediately made a photograph of a woman down the table.

I have remained committed to this concept of capturing the decisive moment ever since I first heard that story many years ago. In the evolution of my own particular vision, I began to synthesize the classic Cartier-Bresson method with a ‘slow photography’ approach driven by my use of a large format camera. The classic Cartier-Bresson method often required extreme patience. One learns to previsualize an image that simply awaits the arrival of the moment. One allows the image to make itself before the eye, and then captures it with the skill of a hunter.

In time I found myself seduced by color photography, and I began to migrate away from making black & white images on 35mm film. I became immersed in a fine art ethic based on the use of a large format camera and color negative sheet film. Soon, the heavy camera with its attendant tripod and accessories began to dictate a far slower approach to making images. Over time I became enthralled with the idea of making bigger and bigger images of beautiful landscapes. Within a few years I was out hiking with my gear searching for photographs to be made.

After several years of near daily hiking trips on Cape Cod and elsewhere I had defined my process. I needed to find images that could be photographed in 360 degrees, and they typically needed to be fairly remote epic landscapes. They needed to have excellent composition, and they needed to be executed with demanding technical precision. Above all other qualities, they had to capture a decisive moment. All of this, and I could only carry enough film to make one image. I could probably write an entire book about what I learned in this endeavor I pursued for many years. In short, I was humbled.

The primary image of this show is a panoramic photograph made out on Sandy Neck Beach in West Barnstable. It was photographed on multiple negatives – seven are shown here – just before sunset on a summer day. I developed the film myself, scanned it, and printed it all with the critical assistance of Bob Korn. Bob runs a world-renowned custom fine art photography lab in Orleans. Virtually all of the large format photography I have done over the past 20 years has been produced in his lab. Not only has he been an exceedingly generous benfactor in supporting my efforts to realize my vision on such a grand scale, he has also provided a level of artistic vision in the printing process that truly enables this work to reach its highest level.

The rope of my vision is golden. It is invaluable at least to me. It connects the images of my wandering creative essence in a virtually linear evolutionary process. There are no missing links in a rope… not to the human eye. Links are the components of the chain that acts as a technological construct to imprison the creative spirit. Rope is an organic representation of infinite possibilities connected by a singular unified purpose. That is what my art is based on. Being human, I am incapable of defining a singular unified purpose, however, and realizing this unalterable fact I credit my vision to a power I am fortunate to channel. I am not Midas. I cannot make gold. I can only tap into its source, and draw it out as long as I know the truth of it.

My understanding of art is this… it does not belong to anyone. Not the creator, not the viewer. It belongs to this unknown power that speaks to us. It tells us what to do. We cannot hear it, but we can know its meaning by shutting our minds to ourselves. We impose our will upon it foolishly. We cannot argue with it, because it does not defend itself. It is a chimera. Believe this, there are no artists, there are only pioneers.