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John Ritchie — photography

The Arts Center Exhibitions:

• 'Finger Licking Good,' April/May 2012
• 'Portals,' Winter Show & Silent Auction, 2011
• 'After Dark in Small Towns,' Corrine Woodman Gallery, July 2011

Artist's Statement, 'Together Forever' - 'Portals,' Winter Show & Silent Auction, 2011

     digital photograph, pigment ink print

I have a photographic split personality. I love night photography with its calm, deliberate pace of long exposures and peaceful, eerie images, but I'm also fascinated by photographs of people - particularly of people encountered at night.  Night photography of people is a series of experiments for me, marrying the long exposures necessary for low-light photography with humans' fleeting emotions.

In 'Together Forever' I use a long exposure and manually-triggered flashes to create ghostlike figures, portraying portals each of us experience in our own lives.

Artist Statement, 'After Dark in Small Towns,' Corrine Woodman Gallery, July 2011

Under cover of darkness, I explore the peaceful solitude of small towns, where alert watchfulness allows the imagination free rein and transforms the nighttime world into unusual imagery.  The patient photographer can capture these elements of the darkness and bring them into the daytime world.  I portray the moods, silences and encounters of the middle of the night.

Biography:
John's fascination with the after-dark world began when he was growing up in a small town, delivering newspapers while everyone was still asleep.  Combined with his more recent fascination with photographic art, John captures the moods, silences and encounters he experiences in the middle of the night.  Although John photographs in color, he frequently uses black and white to portray nighttime images in their simplest form, accentuating the play between lightness and darkness. John counts amongst his influences the fine works of Chris Faust, Robert Adams, and Andrew Sanderson.  John lives and photographs in Corvallis Oregon and the surrounding communities.

The Arts Center Exhibitions:

• '9th Around Oregon Annual Exhibition,' October, 2011
• Herbert Berman & John Ritchie, Corrine Woodman Galleries, July 2011

Visit John Ritchie's website.