Steven Agard

Artist Statement:

I have been making photographic images for over 50 years. I have exhibited in galleries and museums, developed and undertaken commercial applications from traditional color and monochromatic darkroom work to wide-ranging digital image making and processing, to large scale digital printmaking.

I have always been engaged in making personally expressive images. My “day job” of doing technical work for others has served my personal work well.  Earning a living while honing my craft on a daily basis has been critical to my work. Every day, I think about how to use those skills to make images that are new to my eye and not derivative. My work is grounded in photographic images, but moves those images onto new ground made possible by intentionally employed digital manipulation.

I gather raw photographic captures for my projects as I go through my ordinary life. Many images come from dog parks and other places along my habitual daily routes of travel. Common upper Midwestern landscapes dominate. I choose framing that gives me the raw material from which I can build a finished piece of personal expression.

I intend  to make objects that are understood as personal expressions, not as documentation of a specific moment or scene. I want the viewer to engage with the colored ink on paper as I have built it, not with the originating, literal photographic content. The presentation of my work is meant to reinforce this idea. Torn paper edges, borders, key lines, and loose attachment to the backing board are all intended to remind the viewer that they are entering a space in my vision of the world, rather than a document simply rendering a place in the physical world. I am interested in finding routes out of the physical world.

Each portfolio is constructed using a preconceived set of guidelines, for example, on examines the use of combined blurred movement and sharp edges while another explores changing the algorithms that blend images  When I feel that producing another imagine a portfolio would be repetitive or without challenge, I move on.