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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 Rogue

6/5/2019

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Picture
Central to photo art is the question of how far to go. How much to change a photographic capture to transform it from ‘ordinary’ to ‘art’.

I was initially attracted to the patterns of the image repeated on the left and right sides of this work. I didn’t lose that attraction but as I worked with it I felt more strongly that taken at face value there wasn’t enough there to stand as art. A step or two later it had exploded. There wasn’t a middle ground – usually there is, and usually that’s where I find my art. Perhaps due to the high contrast of the photographic capture the pixels jumped from too subtle to too extreme.

It occurred to me that in this case the ‘art’ doesn’t exist at all in the visual spectrum – the ‘art’ is in the juxtaposition between two extremes. Not to come on like Yoko Ono, but in this case the art is conceptual. It’s not something that can be seen by the eye, but only in the mind.

First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.

***

OK. I’d like to set the record straight from comments I made in my previous posting. Yes, I still count Apple as a company rooted in anticipatory learning, but, no, it did not change the way I listen to music by dismantling iTunes.

My fear was that I would no longer be able to keep a music library comprised about half of music downloaded from the iTunes store, but instead could only access that music via a subscription to the Apple cloud. I would no longer be able to own my music but could only access it for a monthly fee. Those fears proved to be unfounded, and in fact on PC’s iTunes is not going away at all. I hope it stays that way – I can clearly see that in the near future subscription streaming services will nickel and dime us to death. I also anticipate that it’s an economic model of great potential that will pervade everything we consume.

​I wonder … how will it apply to art.

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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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