When a person makes a photograph, he can choose black-and-white or full color for its final form. Or he can make the photo using only the pure color that’s left out of a black and white photo. Who can say that either the monochrome or the leftover color is more legitimate or less manipulated? They are opposite faces of the same coin, two halves of a single fruit.

Photography began in monochrome only because it the beginning that was what was possible. But black and white proved to be eloquent and expressive; it endures. In my photos made with the leftover or “free” color, I seek to give proof that they can be equal in expression and eloquence to photos made with the black and white that I omit.

The prospects are good: neither form makes a literal reproduction of a subject, and either allows a vast degree of abstraction and control of a print. Free-color photos can be made “straight” in the same sense as any photograph, which is to say, true to the non-fiction nature of photography. Finally, color is one of nature’s great gifts.

Education
Studied photography at Ohio University with Pavel Banka [1993]
PhD, Nuclear Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin [1991]
BA, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois [1980]

2006
Dark-Light: National Juried Photography Exhibition, Pittsburgh State University, Kansas
Rock Island Fine Arts Exhibition, Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois

2005
Jane T. Walsh Juried Show, Arts for Living Center, Burlington, Iowa
The Iowa Biennial Exhibition, Soros Gallery, Stockholm School of Economics, Riga, Latvia

2004
The Iowa Biennial Exhibition, Project Art Gallery, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa