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Most photographers fall into one of two categories: those who like to be behind the camera and those who like to be in the darkroom. From my first photo class at College for Kids in the University of Rock County in Wisconsin, I was fascinated with the chemistry and processes of the darkroom.
In the twenty years since then I have taken every printing class I could find and experimented on my own to further my knowledge of chemistry and processing. My first serious study in photography was with Michael Simon at Beloit College in Wisconsin. He taught me the importance of printing for permanence. The colorado College gave me my formal training, where I studied under Stuart Kilpper, Charles Walters and Frank Gohlke.
The experience that really honed my skills was my three years working at Sixty-Eight Degrees, a black-and-white custom lab in New York City. From 2000 to 2003 I learned that being good wasn't enough. You must also be quick and able to adapt to each photographer's style. when I wasn't cranking out thousands of pictures of the latest Chrysler car or Nike sportwear, I was their detail printer. If an artist came to us to print the photos for her show or if there was a particularily tricky print to be made, I was the one to do it. My reward: seeing the fruits of my labor on billboards around New York and the rest of the country, as well as in The New Yorker, The New York Times and Vibe magazine and various shows in Manahttan.
My favorite jobs were always the exhibitions. Joni Sternbach's fog-and-oceanscapes demanded technical perfection, while Ethan Levitas needed ultra-rich high-contrast images, but printed with subtlety to allow for publication in book form. That kind of seemingly-paradoxical challenge is my kind of territory.
When I am making my own photographs, I prefer to shoot with a wide angle lens at very close range, preserving the broad scope of the human eye as well as the intricate detail it can discern. Some of my pieces have a more telescopic view with balanced geometric arrangements of rock forms, land and sky. Throughout my work is a compression of each scene into a more two-dimensional space which, when combined with the deep shadows of high-contrast printing, often allows icons and symbols from an unconscious alphabet to emerge.
I design my work to last at least 100 years, using only archival materials, which is why all my personal work is guaranteed against fading or discoloration for its lifetime.
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