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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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You Will Never Be Enough For Me

8/10/2019

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Picture
Let’s get something straight I think I might have misrepresented: The title of the work displayed above, headlined above the picture, and any prose, musings, ventilations, rationalizations, or disparate fantasies that follow below – what you’re reading now – yeah, they have nothing to do with each other. Even when I’m discussing the displayed photo art itself, which I guess I do about half the time, the title still has nothing to do with it. The title is a product of the work, what I’ve tried to reveal or the emotion lurking within. The prose may discuss the technique I used or may go off onto something on my mind; some insight I may think I know. The prose is … well, it’s mainly because I can’t keep my mouth shut.

* * *

Creating photo art from film photography, because of the static nature of film, is much more dependent on the nature of the photograph itself; much more so than a digital image. There are fewer data points to which the artist can grab onto using the computer. I like to describe the creation of photo art as digging into the pixels to reveal hidden aspects of the photographic capture. But an image based on film cannot be dug so deeply into; its structure is set. It’s like trying to dig into rock instead of soil. Which isn’t necessarily bad; there are some gorgeous rocks.

Use of a wide aperture when capturing the photograph, which creates a narrow focal plane, is one technique that lends itself to the artistic process later. It creates very sharp edges, offset by a softer background. This can become particularly pronounced in black and white photography as there are no distracting colors. The artist can utilize a number of techniques to extenuate the edging. Every rock, as it happens, has crevasses.

* * *

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NOTE: This is the third post in a series examining the application of digital techniques to film photography in creating photo art, done in tribute to the closing of the last regional retail photography stores.
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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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