DamnPhotoArtist-Commune

Transparent Seducer

5/3/2019

The truth always comes out, eventually.

There are certain techniques – a dozen or so – I check out when I begin working with a new capture, even if I think I know the direction I’m going to take, and even if that direction does not include any of these techniques, I’m going to check them out anyway. These techniques run the table from subtle to hugely radical, including stuff I almost never use, stuff that examines edging, lighting and texture. I do that before I begin following any notions I might have about the work I want to create.

I do this even for techniques I don’t want to use; possibly even hate using. Because here’s the thing: I may think I see the truth in a given work, only to discover something very different. Every photograph hides its own story deep within its pixels. It’s like doling out subpoenas from which emerge some bombshell I hadn’t expected. Or wanted. Sometimes there’s a bombshell I sort of suspected was there, but didn’t want to believe. It’s part of human frailty; wanting to believe something we’ve been led to believe, an empty and opaque husk that seems solid.

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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

Transparent Seducer

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Curtis Hendricks

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