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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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The Communal Hump

3/20/2019

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Picture
This capture illustrates the importance of edging, or more specifically, properly setting the subject itself off from the minutia surrounding it. In this case, the original capture caught the camels in essentially the same color and light as the background – they were lost with no definition in a busy swirl of brown. It’s been suggested that some of my works are indeed too busy, and this would effectively be the cause. In my case, failing to spot the essence of the photograph; seeing too many things I like in that minutia and trying to throw everything into the final work (I can argue that there are no absolutes, and that in fact on occasion a ‘busy’ work is better than a simplistic one). A good photographer would study the subject at length and look for exactly the right time and placement, perhaps catching the subject in brilliant lighting while the background is in shade, spending hours, or even days stalking the right moment. This is why I insist that I’m a photo artist, not a photographer. I don’t have hours or days; at most I might have a few minutes to line the shot up and capture it, and then using camera equipment that is decidedly less sensitive to light than the sophisticated lenses a professional photographer would bring to bear. In my case, I’m using Photoshop to select the subject and work with it differently than the background so that the subject stands out from it (it could be argued this work does not go far enough with that – it holds too close to realism and does not venture bravely into a more abstract composition – love to hear your thoughts on that). Then it’s a matter of additional work to tie both parts together into a single artistic vision. Indeed, there is an irony that I posses the time and ability to spend hours on the computer completing a work when the photographic capture is a quick point-the-camera-and-grab. But then, another element of photography is freezing fast moving moments. I’m simply using the computer as an interchangeable lens the camera cannot accommodate.
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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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