The Artist

Greg's photography experience began in junior high school as a yearbook photographer, where he first established a love for monochrome photography and the skill of producing images in a darkroom. In his mid-20's, after attending the University of California, San Diego, he moved to the Pacific Northwest and there rediscovered a passion for shooting after being gifted a complete Pentax 6x7 kit and Beseler color enlarger from his father-in-law.

Some initial commercial success and a project with NBC motivated a transition to art school where he studied design and branding, which he has practiced for the past 23 years.

"I never really had a vision to become a working commercial artist, and in fact had sort of backed into the career when I experienced the thrill of earning income from creating images that came out of my head. Although I chose design as the focus of that creative pursuit, photography continued to play a role at different levels, whether it was directing a photoshoot, editing someone's work, or retouching photos."

Now, at the intersection of an extensive design career and a profound desire to produce images from a library built from 30 years of image making, he is embarking on a new creative chapter. Diligently scanning a vast collection of images, most of which have never been printed beyond contact sheets, he's meticulously curating a portfolio that showcases the stylistic intent of his vision. This curated collection, unveiled image by image, offers a glimpse into his storytelling point of view.

"It feels quite unusual but exhilarating to begin exploring the images I've created over the past 30 years with the goal of offering them for public scrutiny. The truth is I created virtually all of them for myself. I wanted people to enjoy them, of course, but if I'm being honest, I made them for myself, probably unconsciously to speak back to myself about my own point of view. At a minimum, they reveal what mattered most to me at the moment I took them."

Sometimes moody but never cynical, his work often captures objects and environments that might initially seem unworthy of recording.

"I think the veneer of happy, shiny, and perfect has become something like a plague, at least to me. I used to try, and fret and fail, to create perfect images. Perfectly sharp. Perfectly bright. Perfectly colored. I can't do it. It gives me scant happiness. I'll paraphrase the artist Alberto Giacometti: 'The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.' I think that hits upon something about my process and vision, which is to amplify aspects of reality by eliminating other aspects of that same reality. For me, that might be color, or constraining the view."

Creating art is an exercise of constraining infinite possibilities of expression.

"I don't know if I became attracted to monochrome photography because it allowed me to focus on tone and texture or whether the desire to experience tactile things led me to making tonal images, but I do know that I gravitated towards black and white images early in my life and that has never changed. When I take a color image I love, it's a bit surprising, really. I usually try to turn it into a monochrome image first!"

Having lived in the heavily methodical and disciplined world of design and branding, shifting to a more experimental environment is not new, but different, with another aspect of his personality allowed amplification.

“In the end, I consider myself to be an observer who records mostly through film or a digital sensor. I think separating that realization and the tool I use to record that observation is an important distinction to make. I occasionally paint, draw, write, and play music (actually, a lot of music). Although the tools in my hands are different, the observer is present in all of those moments. Photography just keeps drawing me back in for more."