| I began taking photographs in the mid 1970's to record the progression of my paintings and collages. Soon I began using the camera as a kind of sketch medium, photographing anything that had visual interest for me: how light fell across a surface, arrangements of objects in nature or objects which I've personally manipulated, etc. It was a visual “workout”, quickly making selections, visual decisions, color and compositional choices with the click of a camera shutter.
Gradually, my photographs became a separate and distinct body of work, a way of seeing that was very different from my abstract and labor intensive sculpture and collages. In contrast, the photos answered and responded to very different visual needs and interests.
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Included on the site are black and white images from the 1970's and ‘80's, sometimes hand colored, along with color photographs from the 90's to the present. There are also photographs taken with a Holga plastic toy camera, a decidedly low tech instrument using a 2.25 x 2.25 format. The camera's simplicity gives the photographer very little control, which is both its strength and its weakness. These photographs are all hand colored and sometimes toned.
In a separate link I have grouped together portraits of friends and other people I have found of interest.
James Zver
Los Angeles
October 2005
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