Artist’s Statement

I have been trac­ing lines with my mind’s eye since I was a lit­tle kid. My fam­ily sub­scribed to LIFE mag­a­zine and I stud­ied every pic­ture in each weekly issue. Father loved tak­ing the fam­ily for long rides around the city and into the coun­try. I found myself fram­ing images in my mind and squeez­ing the win­dow han­dle in his car to sim­u­late cable release click­ing a pic­ture as we drove along. There was never a time I didn’t want to be a pho­tog­ra­pher. Espe­cially, a photojournalist.

Pat­terns and designs call to me. Archi­tec­ture in new or old build­ings, crowded dis­play win­dows, neigh­bor­hoods, move­ment, moods, light. The feel and fla­vor of the city, day or night, is what I seek to cap­ture when I shoot.

At the same time, I love shoot­ing peo­ple. Whether in a care­fully con­trolled set­ting or, more likely, react­ing in an instant to the scene I am in, cap­tur­ing faces, actions, and feel­ings is just plain fun! I am as com­fort­able focused on senior cor­po­rate exec­u­tives as with bar­tenders or clients of non­profit services.

Early influ­ences were Eisen­stadt, Ave­don, Danny Lyons, Sebas­tio Sal­gado, Shomei Tomatsu, Brasii, Hel­mut New­ton, Gene Smith, Arnold New­man, Cartier-Bresson, paint­ings by Edward Hop­per, and the draw­ings of Felix Topol­ski. Cur­rent influ­ences include Andrew Moore, Ruven Afanador, Craig McDean, Jill Green­berg, Sebas­tio Sal­gado, James Nachtwey, and Mr. Penn. With no for­mal train­ing, I learned pho­tog­ra­phy by observ­ing, exper­i­ment­ing, assist­ing pro­fes­sion­als when pos­si­ble, and through on the job expe­ri­ences. Pho­to­shop skills have been gained from online course work plus lots of practice.

I believe in “the deci­sive moment,” while try­ing to guard against my images look­ing too staged or trite.

I respond to mood and design as I shoot what I feel. Retouch­ing and image manip­u­la­tion pro­vide for more cre­ative expression.

Pho­tomon­tage is the nat­ural out­growth of try­ing to see more of a scene — see a wide angle AND close-up view at the same time. To accom­plish this I use tele­photo lenses of vary­ing length.

Every shoot, every project takes on a life of its own. Regard­less of how much it may be planned or how many times I have done sim­i­lar work, there is a moment when chance and dis­cov­ery hap­pen. That is what brings pho­tog­ra­phy to life for me.

To view my art­work please visit harveystock.com