I am a self taught black and white film photographer who has lived in Minnesota since 1994. Prior to that, I spent my first 29 years living in England. I began photographing seriously in the late 80′s, early 90′s and have been heavily influenced by the power of traditional monochrome printing by artists such as the late Fay Godwin, John Blakemore, and late Peter Goldfield. As a direct result of a workshop taken at Duckspool hosted by Fay and Peter in 1992, I began learning to see the world differently, and started to build bodies of work using what I had learned.
After emmigrating to the US in 1994, I continued my regular profession as an IT network engineer working for various companies. As I was traveling around the US as an engineer so much, I was not getting enough time to focus on my photography. In 1998, I took a pretty significant hiatus and did not really start to photograph in earnest until a few years ago.
In December 2007, I dusted off my photography gear, and looked online to order film and paper to try to rekindle my passion. I was soon disheartened by the distinct lack of some of my favorite films and paper. Now what to do??? After looking around to see what film gear was getting on Ebay, I nearly offloaded all my large and medium format gear, and switched to digital! It was at that point, I discovered Apug.org an online community dedicated to the traditional photographic processes. I’d found an oasis of like minded individuals that prefer film and other traditional processes over the fast paced digital imaging craze. Since that time, I’ve never looked back. In the last few years I have shot more images in that time frame than I had in the previous 10 years!
After selecting newer films and papers to work with, I feel I have found a work flow that is comfortable and from which I can continue to grow as an artist. All images are scanned from real Gelatin Silver prints on fiber based paper, and images are archivally processed.
I have since had work exhibited at:-
Dunn Bros Coffee in June 2008
Juried Minnesota State Fair 2008
Juried Minnesota State Fair 2009