The Rest of My Portraits

My Artists Statement: In today's society people are consistently taking pictures of each other. the people in these pictures usually are smiling in order to look their best or making a face to be funny. Rarely do these pictures capture the essence of the individual. Each one of us is so disparate from one another and complex in nature that I would argue it is impossible to capture the wholeness of anyone. However, there are aspects to all of us that hardly get seen. It was my goal to capture one of these aspects on film.

I used a large-format camera which is one I particularly enjoy. My subjects had to stay very very still while I did all the necessary calculations to taking a properly exposed photograph. To help them would they stare at an something directly in their line of vision. I believe that by concentrating on that one spot for an extended period of time allowed for the person to think instead of perform. They exposed a deeper aspect of who they are and that is what I sought to capture.

(This is not a terribly original idea...you don't have to search far into the history of photography to find masterpieces done along these lines. Nevertheless, it was a fun project for me to execute and I got to photograph a lot of my family which makes me happy. I greatly enjoyed the whole process.)

Dad

Mom


Jim

Heidi

Brandon

Arianne

Me