Photography as Art 

The photographs in my album represent most of the best photographs I took during a period (1985 to 1987) when I was intensively pursuing photography as a way of associating with and developing an artistic persona.

This pursuit was made possible by several photography courses I took at Frederick Community College during that period.  Class assignments, instructor encouragement and feedback, and hands-on dark room development opportunities propelled me. 

Class assignments and my own motivations for pursuing certain subjects as a focus for taking photographs was viewed by me as separate in terms of themes shown and stories told by the projects.   I ended up perhaps pursuing a dozen or more “separate” projects.  At the time, I did not realize that an overarching story might perhaps be told by looking collectively at the photographs from each project.

After 1987, my life events and pursuits took me from photography and the many negatives and developed photographs accumulated during my 1985 to 1987 photography period.   These materials were put aside in a box and sat dormant until just recently (2019) when the thought occurred to me that I should use the photographs hidden in a box so that they would be appreciated more as a reflection of my then interest and involvement in photography as art.

What that thought led to was a review of the developed 7 by 9 inches black and white photographs that came out of the many individual projects I pursued.  This review resulted in wanting to display the photographs collectively and thinking about doing this, I realized that a story could be told by the more than fifty photographs displayed in this album.

The story that I believe that can be told by this series of photographs has to do with the showing, as a sequence, essentials of human life – from the nature that surrounds us, to the use of land to meet our needs, to separations that we are prone to use to protect ourselves, to our self-reflections and self-realizations, to the technologies that surround us, to communal participations, and, finally, to our need for a sense that a force exists in our world that can elevate us and humanity.

In the process of putting together this album of photographs, likely the last phase in my pursuit of photography as art, I have decided that stories are critical in our lives and that perhaps the essential usefulness of art is in the stories that the art tells the recipient and that acceptable and meaningful art is based on its value as a story.