ARTIST’S STATEMENT

“I approach the photos the same way I approach drawing in that I am open to looking as opposed to coming with a conclusion. I have been shooting and framing in the large format camera for over 30 years. There are certain things that excite; simultaneous incidents, dramatic scale shifts that are implications of time. When I shoot, I am after a sense of total clarity - if there is such a thing. I need to see three or four miles away as well as feeling the space of this up front twenty yards. What I want is a dynamic space that I can expand or explode from here to infinity. Clarity from a distance to up close, be in, and or a reflection of that space, that is what I am striving to create. What is real? You, or you and your reflection with memories of yesterdays past conversations that are present, which I cannot separate seem real. Looking for that connection is my search.
Transition
My recent lithographic prints were created as scores for concert performances. The photo element of the print provided the background, the environment for the inter play and conversations of the performing musicians.
In the beginning, I was searching for sound environments in which I could place the activity; the solo, the dance, the emotional explosion. Then I found that this sound vista, had to be driving, pushing, be intense it self, for I needed that big city sound to reach that special moment, special place.
I wanted this space to be reflective of, or similar to life. So I sought out views that had multiple incidents, multiple spaces that were connected in time but separated by personal spaces.
Could this multiple incident scene provide the place to create that feeling, that MOMENT?
Then the spaces became so important that the infusion of the solo, the drawing, really interfered with those expansive situations, which had their own FEELING, their own MOMENT.
This produced the photos, but the quest remains, get that situation, THE PHOTO, TO MOVE ME---not document—but to produce that moment.

John Dowell