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Curtis Hendricks

DamnPhotoArtist

Photo Art* & Small Literature**
* Computer-based art that uses a photograph as a base
** Short Prose

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A Whole In Time

5/10/2019

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Picture
OK, pun that is part of the title of this work is intentional – I hasten to mention that (when I had other things to talk about) first, to forestall the Twitterverse (and I use the term to define Social Media in general) going crazy. I fully appreciate the ascension of Social Media in our consciousness, but, let’s face it, people have a tendency to react out-of-context and go off half cocked (I remind you of the line from ‘Men In Black’ that so perfectly defines humanity: “A person is smart; people are dumb, panicky animals and you know it"). And second, because enough people remember my old journalism days to know I previously had large issues with spelling. I say ‘old’ days because it was my inability to consistency spell anything greater than C-A-T that let to my demise in journalism. I say ‘previously’ had issues because, now, and for the last couple decades, there is spellchecking software, which if I’d had ‘then’ I’d probably still be in journalism.

I adore good journalism, and have tremendous respect for journalists, especially in this environment, where politically empowered bullies use journalists as scapegoats to cover their every flaw and numerous misdeeds (in all fairness, journalists themselves contributed to the rise of the bullies in question). Bottom line – I simply lacked the temperament to be a journalist, and it is my good fortune that my deficiencies drove me out of that profession rather quickly. I’m simply not a Type-A personality, I don’t have the killer instinct a good journalist needs, and I just don’t have the proper temperament. I much prefer the cool breeze on the deck to the heat of the kitchen; slow roasting a chicken on the grill to crispy southern pan fried.

No, not a misspelling. Altering context by wielding semantics.

***

A guy I knew in high school, who had found me on a widely used Social Media platform, once respond to one of my works by saying “I don’t understand still lives”. Some time later and for an unrelated reason I decided the guy was a blowhard who I really didn’t need in my life (he probably felt the same way about me – especially in my younger days I could be a little shit). (Cue the chorus crying, “younger days”?). Certainly over time a number of acquaintances have fallen by the wayside for that reason; who needs that kind of ugliness in their lives?

I suspect I’m the real loser in the deal.

It wasn’t this guy’s fault that his opinionating posts irritated me – he wasn’t trying to piss off specifically me. And, of course, in those days so many of us thought we could use Social Media to actually educate everybody to why they should think like we personally do. That my lasting thought about the guy is that I didn’t need him is a subtraction from my own universe. Me retreating to the cool breeze and the slow roasting chicken on the deck, missing everything going on inside the house.

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    Curtis Hendricks

    All my life I have had to learn to do things differently. To see the world differently.

    Art attracted me from the beginning. Almost every home in the tiny farming village where I grew up had DaVinci’s ‘Last Supper’ on the wall. I would come across modern abstract art in magazines and be absolutely fascinated by the colors and techniques.

    But there were no artists in my village. No one understood what modern art was. Or why it was. But there was an appreciation for photography.

    I began shooting with a 1960 model Agfa rangefinder fixed-lens 35mm camera and learned to use darkroom techniques to finish my work. Graduating to a single lens reflex camera I worked primarily with Kodachrome. Digital photography opened a new world. The computer became the artboard I never had; the darkroom I could never afford. I discovered there would never be a camera or a lens that could capture what I saw in my head – that, I had to learn to create on my own.

    I use the photograph the same way a painter uses a charcoal sketch – as a starting place. I squeeze out the unseen hiding between the pixels; the angels, the demons of my own imagination.

    ​Light. Color. Darkness. Perspective. Introversion. Mystery. Love.

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