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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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Front Porch Serenade

3/12/2020

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Picture
Over the years, I’ve gone out of my way NOT to capture photographs of people. Now I’m doing exactly the opposite.

I avoided it for so long mostly for privacy concerns. I didn’t want to put work out there of some anonymous stranger only to have that stranger show up later complaining that they’d never given me permission. Forget that such captures would always be gathered in public places. Do I have a right to use the image of someone for my own purposes? I suppose that’s the ‘straight arrow’ side of my personality coming out; I’m fine stirring the pot up, as long as I don’t REALLY get in trouble for it.

What’s changed is that the abstraction techniques I’m using now are so compelling when applied to human figures as to overwhelm any fear I once had in capturing them. That, and that when I’m finished applying these techniques the identity of an individual pretty much vanishes. At least eight faces are clearly depicted in today’s work – could a positive ID be made from any of them?

​Oh, sure, this was a public event and the individuals captured were part of an organized group conducting a planned activity, so, yeah, those involved probably have a fair idea who was who. But all those factors, in my current view, make them fair game.
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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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