Photo Liminalism

: Whenever I see this image I feel the sun beating down and sand between my toes. Viewers continue to respond to this image since its debut in 2015…it reminds them of Seurat’s painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte or of Kandinsky’s work, the happy scene that they can get lost in…it’s quintessential summer at the beach…and they love my blue! The New York Times chose to publish this image to announce the debut of The Brush/Lens Project exhibit in 2015 and I selected it for my Photo-Liminalism exhibition announcement in 2018…as well as the introductory image into this new portfolio.

: …and now to go back in time….The viewfinder has always been my canvas. The world is my palette and what and how I see are art elements: shape, color, light, texture, etc. On Christmas Day in 1999, while on the way to Antarctica with 40 rolls of film, I visited Port Stanley in the Falklands. Along the main street I was attracted to the textures of assorted materials used to construct the buildings…but what I saw did not capture what I felt and wanted to express. I needed to intensify the dull trapazoidal shape of sky and get rid of extraneous lines of wires and poles that cluttered the visual field of pure color, shape and texture. This was my first exploration into creating my vision in the digital darkroom using Photoshop 6. Little did I know that Photo-Liminalism would grow from this? The seed had been planted!

: Nine years later, photographed through a winshield on the New Jersey Turnpike passing Elizabeth, New Jersey….As I downloaded my image files onto my hard-drive I was excited by the structure of this capture i.e. the positive and negative space and the bold vertical shape. It held promise to what I envisioned to to be. The original photo was taken in 2008 and it took a few years of periodic work to create my vision…and then it sat in its own folder because it was a singleton, unlike anything I had previously created. When Ward Hooper, whom I hadn’t yet met, posted his painting Long Island City on Facebook I responded with Night Lights and thus began a social-media conversation that grew into a collaboration that developed into The Brush/Lens Project…where trickles of my creative process exploded…and now it is growing into a book targeted to be published in 2019.

: The opportunity to try NIK software presented itself and curiosity got the best of me. An enthusiastic collector of my work was unimpressed with a series of crashing water photos that I took in Maui. I had been so energized by the experience that I was disappointed by his lack of enthusiasm. I knew I had something but it might need to be recreated…so this became my first digitally created image. When Great Wave, crashed onto the computer screen I knew that I was onto something but had to digest what I did. I had just returned from Giverny, where Monet’s Garden and his Japanese wood-block print collection that included Hokusai’s Great Wave drenched my senses. When I turned this color photograph into a black and white print, it looked more like an Asian brush painting or lithograph than a photographic image. Great Wave flowed into the exhibition, Holly Meets Hokusai. See Water Music portfolio for more images in this series. Creating this work was such a shock that it took me days to recover and comprehend the process. I began writing to help me understand what I stumbled upon…and have been writing ever since.

: So much to say…and create to stop destruction of our Long Island landscape! The encroaching fuel tanks in Riverhead caused me concern 10 years ago when I was photographing the agricultural landscapes of the East End of Long Island. The tanks looked like a dystopian army invasion and crows were swarming above it all. Back then I thought of Van Gogh’s painting, Crows Over the Wheatfield, that screamed of his emotional turmoil. Every time I returned to my photograph I couldn’t make its visual cry purposeful enough until creating Crows Over Farm Field in 2017 when I superimposed Van Gogh’s tormented sky into my work.

: I had looked for color at the Northport marina in early November and most of the boats were gone but I did find a cluster to work with. Stained and weathered wood, bright colors, shadows, reflections and varied water tempos provided the visual stimuli to take these photos several months before Ward and I met and began our collaboration. Reflections were always of interest to me because water caused colors to undulate and I loved the fluidity…and then I discovered that I could use technology to make my work more fluid.

: I had looked for color at the Northport marina in early November and most of the boats were gone but I did find a cluster to work with. Stained and weathered wood, bright colors, shadows, reflections and varied water tempos provided the visual stimuli to take these photos several months before Ward and I met and began our collaboration. Reflections were always of interest to me because water caused colors to undulate and I loved the fluidity…and then I discovered that I could use technology to make my work more fluid.

: Actually this was the first of the series…an experiment, exploration…and I loved the painterly quality so I decided to experiment with some other photos of the same subject that I took that day. I had looked for color at the Northport marina in early November and most of the boats were gone but I did find a cluster to work with. Stained and weathered wood, bright colors, shadows, reflections and varied water tempos provided the visual stimuli to take these photos several months before Ward and I met and began our collaboration. Reflections were always of interest to me because water caused colors to undulate and I loved the fluidity…and then I discovered that I could use technology to make my work more fluid.

: As in painting, there are many types of brushes and brush strokes as well techniques to apply the paint, etc. All these decisions are made by the painter; and just like the painter, the photographer can contol the vast array of tools and software that can be found in the digital darkroom. As in painting the artist can choose what to include and/or exclude from his preliminary sketch, so can the photographer in the digital darkroom. It was during early conversations in our collaboration, which we realized that as adversarial as painting and photography once were, there were many similarities that we chose to focus on. The graphic shapes of this composition led my process down a different path.

: The Brush/Lens Collaboration caused my creative floodgates to open. Interaction, mutual respect for our art forms, finding innumerable similarities in our work and sharing inspiration locations….the colors and textures inspired by the landscape aroused creative innovation that exploded. I didn’t realize at the time but Photo-Liminalism was solidifying after trickling for years.

: This was a particularly complex image that required removing, replacing, rebuilding…I knew what I needed to do to make it happen…just wasn’t sure how I was going to do it. There is no formula or recipe, no pre-set action and no one-button pushing apps that are used to create my work. The process varies with each image and this image was intuitive bushwhacking through and through. What a creative journey I took….art and intuitiveness were my trusty compass!

: This image was a turning point as it led to the discovery that early American abstract artists Arthur Dove and Helen Torr were inspired by the very same landscape nearly one hundred years before us…and in many ways had a complex relationship similar to ours that influenced and inspired their art. When I discovered a parallel to our Brush/Lens collaboration, I renamed this work in homage to them….and Ward said, “Oh, there’s this Dove-Torr House, it’s a little ramshackle cottage and I can take you there if you’d like to see it.” Of course I shrieked yes!

: As you can see from previous images, I tend to exclude the human form from my vision. That way it is an intimate and personal relationship I am establishing with my created world. In this situation the figures add to the intimacy. They give the sweet morning a personal connection with Nature. Kayaking is being one with the water, from my experience, and seeing the envrons from water’s-eye view is an extraordinary perspective. Can you feel the rhythm of the paddles on the water and think that you are solitary in this universe?

: Manhattan continues to be vital raw energy that I love to visit and return home exhausted. The world in front of my lens is my palette and taking the picture is the first pART of my creative journey or process. It is how I see and not what I see…because I choose my composition, perspective, focus, f-stop, and exposure…and then in the digital darkroom I may create beyond what I captured.

: Sometimes I have an idea where I am going and sometimes it’s an intuitive free-fall. Sometimes hours of work result in nothing. Lots of art and art history is in my head that influences and/or inspires…but there is no script and I make it up as I go along. Manhattan continues to be vital raw energy that I love to visit and return home exhausted. The world in front of my lens is my palette and taking the picture is the first pART of my creative journey or process. It is how I see and not what I see…because I choose my composition, perspective, focus, depth-of-field, and exposure…and then in the digital darkroom I may create beyond what I captured.

: I love to create my reality. East Hampton was ensnared by road repair and clutter but I chose to make it a gentle morning where respite from the sun could be found on the shaded sidewalk.

: Many multi-story buildings were erected in Chongqing to house the millions of Chinese who were forced to evacuate their homes and land for the completion of The Three Gorges Dam project. The congestion of repetitive rectangular patterns and rhythm made me think of Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie-Woogie. I made my color stronger to emphasize the visual beat of crowded anonymity.

: This image took weeks of work to pronounce finished. I never thought back in 2007, that our surprise sighting of this sailing camp in Baddeck, Nova Scotia would lead to the eventual creation of Prepping for the Race. My location photo became a starting point for something new and different when I revisited it many years later; and since then, I have revisited former work to see if they might inspire new vision.

: Invariably it’s all about the color and light…and on this occasion the glorious clouds. There are some days that the clarity of the air makes me head for my cameras and revel in the beauty of the great outdoors.

: The bold patterns of color were the visual lure that got them both—hook, line and sinker! Ward had painted markers many years ago and wanted to include the painting in our debut exhibit…so what was a collaborating buddy to do? I had to go out and find markers to photograph and create from! One of the neat things about our collaboration was how we caused each other to expand our vision and find intrigue in subjects that we frequently avoided. In this tourist shop in Ft. Meyer, Florida I found assorted decorative buoys on ropes and out of desperation photographed them with my iPhone. It took a lot of work and ingeunity bu in the end I was pleased with this creation…and it made Ward happy too!

: The iconic landmark of the Northport stacks looms in the distance… a silent creeping presence of urbanization. The lone fisherman stands in his soon to be invaded space…and I wonder whether he feel the pressure, accepts its encroachment or roils at the thought of its intrusion.

: A naturalist friend took me out to Montauk State Park in early March. It was a cold clear day and the ponds were still icy. Frozen clumps of snow blanketed the earth. I photographed as we went along. The natural beauty and solitude of the forested area was exhilarating. These image files sat untouched for three months before Ward asked if I had anything that might partner with his winter painting….so I revisited what I had taken that March day and worked for days to create Winter Woodland.

: This photograph was taken long before I began creating in the digital darkroom. This was taken when I captured with my camera. At the time my concerns and focus was with the relationship of positive to negative space, perfection and for visual tension in my viewfinder. The opposite colors of the orange monarch works beautifully with the purple Scaevola plant…and then, while processing the raw file in Photoshop CS5, I experimented with the sumi filter and created my personal interpretation! This was a place I never went before and I discovered that I can do more than capture. It was so liberating. Creatively, I was all-a-flutter…not to be confused with my All a Flutter portfolio that can be seen on this website.

: The intensity of the color really got to me. The robust gold against a more etherial mauve with the background pattern of trees that look as though they were drawn with pen and ink on wet paper. This is a recent work and I love the fluidity of color and composition that I can achieve.

: Bayard Cutting Arboretum is a New York State Park that has been an integral inspiration location for decades. It is described as an “oasis of beauty and quiet for the pleasure, rest and refreshment of those who delight in outdoor beauty; and to bring about a greater appreciation and understanding of the value and importance of informal planting.” The evolution of my camera and EYE can probably be traced by work that I’ve taken here.

: Stunned by the simple articulation of Monet’s comment to look beyond the bloom because he stated what I had been doing unconsciously. I see the world as art elements and not as nouns. Flowers were palettes of color and I intensified the paint quality in this image by selectively focusing out of focus. I frequently adjusted my camera settings to deliberately be out of focus and have a shallow depth of field. Even without photoshop I was controlling my vision and using my camera to creat and not capture. In photoshop I created layers of photos I took and began experimenting with opacity. Much of this can be found throughout my website.

: Expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights’ was the standard in traditional wet-darkroom black and white photography…and I have no idea how that maxim correlates to digital color photography…but I do love the inter-play of higlights and shadows in contemporary digital darkroom color image.

: Fire Island is but a short boat or ferry ride away. In one instant the frenetic rat-race pace can be swapped for a more simple respite.

: In the 1990’s Nature was my studio. Then as I began traveling extensively, the world was my studio….and now my studio know no bounds….but wherever my creativity takes me concerns for our environment are always present. In the early 2000’s I took many photographs of the farmlands of North and South Forks of Long Island and one of them was a starting point for this image.

: The color orange is my favorite color and when Nature presents an orange sunset, I like to think that she is giving me a special gift. The original photo sat for years before I decided to cut and paste and create a collage. I added the yellow sphere and ran slivered shapes through it.

: This image and Ready and Waiting were created at the same location. What an inspirational pause that was! A viewer commented that this work made her think of Monet’s pond and the dinghys that sit under the weeping willows. Today they are used by the gardeners to keep the pond clean….so as I researched Monet’s boat paintings I also looked at Manet’s work and think that my image may share a similar tonality…and discoveries continued.

: Seeing Van Gogh’s Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries, for the first time in several years, I saw a similarity to the structure of Ready and Waiting. There was no conscious thought when the original photograph was composed and taken…but I think in many ways our brains are like computer hard-drives. We have lots of data stored that run beneath the surface of mementary awareness during the creative process that we are not even conscious of. It’s what makes our personal vision, aesthetics and intuitiveness ours alone…

: In 2013 I scoured Manhattan looking for reflections to photograph. Back then I hadn’t yet realized how much control I might have in creating my vision…so I looked for it outside of myself. For a while I thought I’d call this series SEE-sures but never brough it to completion. After completing my Water Music series I revisited the original color photograph and created this image. There are many images that could develop from one photo.

: The Eiffel Tower elevator stopped, periodically, on the way up and what a vantage point I had! Through the pulley I was able to frame Sacré-Coeur in the distance. I opted to recreate the image in black and white to emphasize the mechanical prowess and turn the vista into a tapestry.

: I loved the sleek stainless lines of the vase, wedged between two slabs of glass and decided to stage a photo shoot. I surrounded everything with black foamcore, plucked some blooms from my garden and took my photos. In photoshop, I reduced everything to black and white and filled in black to make the negative space one plane. Working the contrast and brightness until it satisfied my vision. Usually, I find the subject and this time I manipulated it…but it was an experiment and I love the results. Homage to Man-Ray and his photo-grams but this was done with camera on my kitchen table and transported to Photoshop in the mid 2000’s…all part of my creative journey that has led to Photo-Liminalism….so far…..

: Photographs fade…The rhythm of life and death and what and how we live create memories and relationships that can last as well as fade or be forgotten. This image is my visual statement of the transient yet indelible bond between old and young. Especially in China where honoring ancestry is directly connected to home and land and part of the saddness of uprooting families when they were relocated to Chongqing during the Thre Gorge Dam Project. Space within a home is established to honor the memories of departed family members while those living may reside in crowded conditions. This image was just re-created and comes from my inventory of visit to China in 2008.