Brad Smith
Sunday, October 29th, 2006
Kent, Connecticut. Brad and his wife Karin are artists who live near us and who I’ve come to know and respect. Brad studied painting at Yale with Josef Albers and has been around the painting, printmaking, and photography world for a long time; he has a long view on it which is refreshing in this digital, decontextualized world of ours.
Brad was instrumental in pushing me to start printing my photography and to take that end of the process as seriously as the exposure end of it. He makes large, monochromatic photographic prints of natural forms (plants, landscapes) and they are fantastic. His knowledge of color theory, zone system, and all of the post-exposure pieces that go into making a fine print is both broad and deep yet, he never wears any of it on his sleeve: he’s one of the most humble people I know.
Flickr is a great virtual community and I’ve met many wonderful people there who I’ve learned a lot from but I need to balance flickr with a more local community of people who I get together with to talk about all of this stuff, from “what is photography” to where they buy their ink to “what did you think of the John Paul Caponigro* lecture.” I’m delighted that Brad Smith is part of my local community of friends.
*Karin, Brad and I went to hear JP caponigro who gave a talk at a local college and while we weren’t crazy about his surrealistic photographic work, the talk was absolutely first rate and his ideas about how photography fits into the art world are worth considering. If you can get a chance to hear this guy talk, don’t miss it.
Another view of the same image.
