DamnPhotoArtist-Commune

Christmas With A Bullet

12/26/2018

An older work, this is one of a half dozen made of a photographic capture of a Christmas wreath. This was my brother-in-law's favorite from that series. Notice how it looks like a bullet hole with a bloody smear? That's why he liked it.

At the time I would have contended it was just a visual exercise, not intended to impart a heavy meaning, and in fact was more playful than anything else. But, looking at it now, it reflects how time impacts what we do as artists. Maybe done playfully then, the impact of gun violence removes any innocence from it. Just an exercise though it may have been then, now it is colored by this 'war on Christmas' nonsense. I hesitate to add overt political or social opinions to this post - I think my semantics well illustrates my sentiments. My point is to illustrate the weight art may carry over time, irrespective of what might have been intended at its creation. It will be interpreted and adapted as fits the times and individuals who view it. The artist is merely the origin, like casting free a message in a bottle.

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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.

DamnPhotoArtist

Christmas With A Bullet

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Curtis Hendricks

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