Artist Statement

"Extraordinary Images of the Photographic Arts"

Richard Chandler

Artist Statement

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I've been a photographer since my very early teens. Although my education is in electronic engineering, photography has remained central to my life. I've been influenced and affected by many photographers and artists over the years, both in technique and vision. The Zone System of Minor White and Ansel Adams has had a profound effect on the technical aspects of my photography and image rendition. Other influences have come from Richard Misrach, John Sexton, Ansel Adams (inevitably), Eliot Porter, Georgia O'Keeffe, Claude Monet, and many others.

My photographic interests are wide-ranging. Many of my images come from business and pleasure travel, both foreign and domestic, and others derive from photography-inspired travels around the countryside as well as casual observation of local subjects. I prefer to photograph object and scenes that may not be obvious to some photographers. The grand spectacles of nature are ably captured by hundreds of talented photographers, and I see no need to reproduce their work.

My photography is entirely film-based, at least as far as recording the image is concerned. I work mostly in medium (6x6, 6x17) and large (4x5) formats, although I still produce considerable work in 35mm. I scan my transparencies and negatives and print digitally, but I limit my digital manipulations to those things I can also do in the darkroom: slight color adjustments and corrections, cropping, contrast control, and retouching. The amount of information stored in a medium- or large-format transparency is far greater than that of a digitallycaptured image, and the transparency is a permanent record of the scene.

As for equipment, these photographs were primarily taken with a Hasselblad system. I scan all my transparencies with an Imacon 848 scanner and print on wide-format printers using archival pigments and Moab Entrada fine art paper without optical brighteners. I mount prints on archival Bainbridge foamcore and mat them using Light Impressions Westminster rag board (again without optical brighteners).