Ray Van Nes

Ray Van Nes

Artist Statement

My interest in photography as a means of expression beyond the snapshot, began in the late 1970s. One of the figures of note at the time was Ansel Adams. His career began in the 1920s , but he was a prominent figure still in the 1970s and 1980s although he was at the end of his career. His influence along with others who were of the Modernist or school of “straight photography”, This was my jumping off point.

Modernism rejected more traditional expression and encompassed a number of movements, including: Cubism, Surrealism, Fauvism & Abstract Expressionism. Being a photographer, where your medium is rigidly realistic, or at least it used to be, makes some of those forms of expression challenging. If you specialize in monochrome, Fauvism is definitely out. Some in the 1920s , such as Man Ray and later Jerry Uelsmann were successful surrealists.

I was drawn to the abstract element of the medium. Although I started with Ansel, I moved on to others such as Brett Weston, Aaron Siskind, Minor White. Although Ansel was a driving force of “straight photography”, he tended to be more literal, with the beauty of nature overwhelming him. Brett Weston was no such a sentimentalist. There is a story of the two being side by side with their cameras, Ansel’s was pointed out toward the vista, while Brett’s was pointed at the ground, photographing an abstraction of ground cover.

So, while I am guilty of being wooed by the grand scene, but I am most successful when I can separate out an element of whether it is landscape or the built environment. I can see beauty in a pattern of the land in the badlands or some piece of machinery. They are the same. Working in black and white, an image becomes instantly abstract , but I then use light and form to hopefully make some new elegant reality.