Of The Earth
I have a deep, personal connection with the earth and I seek creative refuge in the wilderness of the Colorado Plateau. As a large format photographer, I feel that there is a particular meditative connection between my camera and my subject. Viewing the scene and composing under the dark cloth isolates me from the distractions around me and allows me to focus and bond with my subject. This connection is critical when making an exposure. The decisive moment of light, composition, and perfect stillness must each align into perfect harmony before the exposure can be made.
With a background in music, I feel that my exposure is my score and the print is my performance. For years, I sought ways to produce a handmade full-color photograph in the darkroom from one of my large format film images that had superb achievability as my other series of platinum palladium prints. The limitations I faced were dye-based processes found in the Cibachrome, dye transfer, and chromogenic printing, which had inferior stability and lightfastness - I wanted my prints to last for generations, just as I had printed them. It wasn’t until I stumbled upon carbon transfer printing where the lightbulb came on and the journey began.
Shortly after this discovery, I was working in Utah and I noticed the iron-heavy soil in that area had stained my clothes red after a long backpacking trip. Then, another lightbulb came on. I had remembered a rabbit hole I had once found myself in where I had been researching paintings made entirely from earth pigments, including Vermeer’s use of lapis lazuli for Girl With a Pearl Earring. These pigments will essentially never fade since they had already been subjected to millennia of the elements and ultraviolet light.
Using these sources – soil and metamorphic rock – I can produce the most stable color photographs in existence. A handful of dirt from around the world becomes embedded in each photo, producing the full range of color of the canyons of the Colorado Plateau. Each photograph represents the deepest connections between myself, my subject, my print, and the earth.
Earth Pigments
20 Editions, 5 Artist Proofs
10x12.5” - 8 Editions
16x20” - 6 Editions
22x27.5” - 4 Editions
32x40” - 2 Editions
