Kinley's Restaurant and Bar

Mark Stadsklev

Looking Over the Edge - The Photograph as an Art Form

Friday June 4, 2010

Medium:

Photography

Artist Statement:

I am a restless artist. I began like most recording what everyone sees but then I began to play with intimate closeups of nature, waves of grass in 40 mile an hour winds, Dolly Varden feeding in a shadowy stream, and crawling with my camera underneath living glaciers. Now I will occasionally use the computer as a tool to heighten effects or sharpen attention to one aspect of the spirit in the form. Photography in the last 20 years has changed much like painting changed over the last 200 years. The transition is back and forth between realism and the abstract form. I have been accused of having a split personality, but never of being boring. These images of Alaska are unusual but true to the identity of the wild and varied lands in which we live. “Great art picks up where nature ends.” - Marc Chagall “You don’t take a great photograph, you make it.” - Ansel Adams