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Artist Statement

I believe fine art photography is more than printing and displaying a photograph with museum quality materials. I feel the imagery can go beyond the recorded subject and take on a new dimension of its own. The term "fine art photography" is almost an oxymoron because most people associate fine art with a laborious hand-applied medium, such as oil on canvas, and photography as a Kodak moment instantly preserved by a print from the one-hour photo store. If I were to ask you what "abstract expressionism" brings to mind, I doubt it would be a photographic image. It would more likely be a fine art piece void of subject matter where color, form and texture are the main focus. Just as we have seen the fusion of different cuisines in restaurants, the digital darkroom has allowed the fusion of fine art technique with photographic imagery. I am not talking about applying a watercolor filter to a landscape photo or tracing a photo in the computer to make it look artistic. To me, that is the digital equivalent of paint-by-numbers and is just as obvious.

What I am trying to do with my Flower Fantasies series is to combine the vibrant colors and the familiar forms of flowers in an abstract fusion of light and visual depth. By combining the flower shapes, I am able to create a unique mood with this imagery that is almost hypnotic as it draws you into the illusion of reality that, with closer inspection, is really fantasy.

C.H. Brittenham, Jr.