Jerry Cook
I was 5-years-old when I tried to develop film the first time. I took a roll of film into our bathroom at home and used all sorts of chemicals on it--cologne, shaving cream, etc. Time spent with a Boy Scout Explorer group studying photography let to the high school yearbook, and on to a degree in photography. I bought my first set of darkroom chemicals & materials from a Sears catalog and used a closet and bathroom at home as my first personal darkroom. Seeing the first print I ever developed emerge from the final rinse was fantastic—a feeling that has never gone away. Developing and printing is a timed dance, and this is the way I dance, waiting anxiously and very impatiently through one step and then another, until the grand finale; then beginning again because I can do it differently, better.
I live with a camera in my hand. If it is not there, there’s a pencil or pen and paper close by. I must create. Just as breathing is a part of Life, so is creating Art, for me. I’ve drawn, painted, sculpted, worked with stained glass and just about every medium and technique there is. While I’m exploring mixed media sculpting and watercolor painting right now, I’ve never left photography. I never neglect my camera.
Photography lies. Most people think photography is true realism, portraying or capturing something exactly as it is, as it exists in the “here and now.” Not so. That one photo that the viewer sees tells the story that I want it to; I choose what to show to the viewer. I show the beauty and art that is all around us everyday, that people frequently miss. My photos allow others to see the beauty in the textures and designs of a fractured, dried mud bed, or the number plate on a steam engine.
One shot leads to another, sometimes similar, and sometimes in a completely new and different direction. “Accidents” often create new routes to explore, new techniques to try and to develop. A series of my photographs around one subject or theme will show a gradual progression from one to another, and yet may be radically different between the first and last. Color, focus, angle, depth, size, proportions, and yes, even subject matter can and does change. I follow where my art leads, down different paths and in many directions, sometimes showing beauty, sometimes irony or humor. My art is my way of commenting about what I see in the world.
http://pages.suddenlink.net/jerry/ My personal web page.
email
These are random selection of prints in no order.
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