Moses Makes Pictures

 I tried to take photos which captured those small moments of my life which make me pause a reflect for a short while. This small selection of the photos that I took for this project represents the images that I found most intriguing, and from these images I chose the ones I would print for my final critique. During my critique the main take-away I got was that these pictures made people kind of uncomfortable, and I thought this was rather. By taking photographs of very un-glamorous moments, I seemed to have drawn attention to those parts of my visual experience which are not usually shared with others. Life in made up of a mountain of banalities, with occasional moments of greatness, and I think it important to give more respect to the former.

Artist Talk at the UNH Museum of Art Scott Schnepf: Four Decades of Printmaking Wednesday November 8 Scott Schnepf gave a talk on his career and practice as a printmaker and professor of art this past Wednesday. The show of his prints filled the upper floor of the museum and they had been hung for a while before the talk, so that I was already somewhat familiar with them, it being my habit to observe the art in the museum on a regular basis. Before the talk Iwas duly impressed with Schnepf’s work, and hearing the artist speak only broadened my admiration for him as a maker. Schnepf is a printmaker and a painter. He began making prints when he was pursuing his BA at Augusta College, and by his telling he has found in this medium an artistic process which fits well with his temperament and approach to creating an image. He also spoke about how making prints is a complementary process to making paintings, and that he finds it informative to toggle between the two. Schnepf ...

I was out with two good friends in the field of rough stubble which rolls down from the wagon on wagon hill. I was trying to take portraits of Lansing and Moriah, ala Mr. Dirado, and I was failing miserably. I couldn’t find the words to say to make my subjects take the form of the portrait that I wanted to make. The mix of humour and impassioned authenticity that Dirado strikes when he makes a picture eluded me entirely. I am very aware that he has been doing this a long time and I am a novice, and that to expect any kind of greatness from my first serious foray into portraiture is a fool’s hope. This was not my first attempt at “Dirado type” pictures either, I had tried four times before in interior settings, and each time the pictures I took did not satisfy. I found that having a camera in hand made my interactions with my subjects rather awkward, and that the best photos I took were candid ones, which was not the way Dirado worked. I had hoped that taking on this project...