Craig Roberts

Artist Statement

"It has always been easier for me to speak of my work in technical terms rather than to attempt to explain the “meaning” of the picture. Maybe a brief look at the path that has brought me to my current place in my photography journey would help the viewer to find the meaning in my work.

My maternal grandfather had been an amateur photographer long before I knew him. We often talked of setting up a darkroom in his basement and printing the stacks of glass plates that he had kept. Alas, this did not happen and the glass plates were unceremoniously disposed of before I was aware of their value. I have only a few hundred cellulose nitrate negatives of his from around 1912. These early dreams whetted my appetite to learn about the photographic process..

My first attempts at developing film were in the bathroom of my parent’s house when I was 13 or 14.  Armed with a couple of books from the library on photographic processing and some chemicals obtained from a local photographic studio, I developed a roll of film from a “spy” camera won at the state fair. It worked!  Soon I had an enlarger and a makeshift darkroom in my parent’s basement. To this day I vividly recall the “magic” of watching the print emerge after it is placed in the developer. That magic has stayed with me all of these years.

It was during this time that I met Art Haas. Art was a professional photographer working as a photojournalist for the Racine Journal Times. Art also had a steady commercial business and pursued his own private vision.  Working with Art helped me develop my vision, teaching me photographic concepts and ideas and different ways to look at the world.  The association went beyond technique to being able to look at the world photographically.

In 1980, I attended the Zone 6 Workshop in Putney, Vermont with Fred Picker.  The workshop was a good balance between photographic technique and looking at photographs (vision).  Two things happened at the workshop.  The zone system (an exposure and development technique) promoted by Ansel Adams became a reality rather than a theory. Looking at the photographs presented by the staff, I experienced the full power of the photograph as a visual means of communication.  I left the workshop knowing that the best print making techniques, without vision and content, is merely an exercise, not art.

Continuing my desire to define my own personal vision, in 1985, I attended a workshop with Cole Weston in Ashville, NC.  Up to this time the majority of my photographs mimicked what had done before in the medium. It was now the time to make my own statement. The Industrial Nudes were born in my mind on the drive home from that workshop.  I knew the machinery well from my own day-to-day life.  Putting the models in the machinery began as an exploration of the juxtaposition of the curves, textures and tones of the human flesh against that of the machinery. On another level, the photographs portrayed my feeling that the expansion of technology dehumanizes society, taking away personal interaction.

At a gallery showing of the Industrial Nudes in Albuquerque in 1994, Mr. Pulkka, art critique for “Nucity”, an Albuquerque arts publication stated my feelings best.  “Aesthetically Roberts has presented us with classical nudes that could have inspired the Greeks to carve the Venice de Milo.  These photos of women are about vulnerability and beauty, not sexuality.  The huge machines are a metaphor for the masculine struggle for power and material transcendence.  The images are small.  The energy rift is huge.  I hope that Roberts pursues a series of reconciliatory images that serve to suture the psychic wound that this series clearly reveals.”

Since that show, my pursuit has been to heal that wound that Mr. Pulkka refers to.  Going back to nature follows the advice of the poet, Rainer Maria Rilke in “Letters to a Young Poet”, draw near to nature.

This is when I began exploring White Sands. The first attempts were tentative, using a mix of black and white and color films in 35mm format. It seemed far easier to photograph the dunes in color at the beginning. I sensed the potential of this landscape in black and white but was overwhelmed with the immensity of the place and the “Sands” did not seem willing to part with its images in the monochrome format. I persevered, hauling around a large format Deardorff view camera."

Craig Roberts