If You Look at Everything, You're Bound to See Something

 By Brian Coleman

I make photographs, primarily, but I occasionally make small sculptures from found objects and collages with discarded vinyl letters. My photographic interest is making pictures of whatever catches my eye. Though maybe indiscriminate, this entails looking at the ordinary, the banal and unnoticed visual detritus that comprises our daily experience. Sometimes there is some “there” there. My photographs, though not exclusively monochromatic, are usually black, white, and gray.

For my meeting with the Rye Art Study Group on Monday March 16, I will show a selection of my digital photographs, small 3D pieces, a selection of photo books and perhaps a collage or two. We can have a conversation about what I show and what the group sees.

Generally speaking, light and shadow, texture and shape appeal to me in a most visceral way. Choosing what to photograph comes down to walking around with “soft eyes” as the American photographer Henry Wessel puts it. Deliberately looking for a good photograph, for me, almost never yields anything satisfactory. Intuition seems to be the best guide. If something catches your eye long enough to make you pause and, well, look again, that might be worth capturing. I don’t have to know “why.”

Over the last five years I have been organizing my photos by theme or mood, composition, or subject matter to better understand, or make some better sense of what I’ve been doing all these past many years.

This process has resulted in a more focused grouping of pictures, anywhere from four to twenty four which are then edited and sequenced into portfolios. Editing and sequencing really matter and I enjoy that process immensely. Portfolio images are then formatted and reprinted to become hand sewn photo books.

In respect to the sculptures and collages, I find they are more difficult to write about. Better just looked at, but questions are invited. We can talk.

Five years ago I retired after working for thirty five years at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts. My work was in collection care and art preparation as well as being a lighting technician. My studio is in the Lower Salmon Falls Mill in Rollinsford, N.H.  I live just across the river in South Berwick, Maine.