This week is the turn of Roger Leege, (from Florida, USA) to introduce himself:
During and since my formal training (BA and MA) in Fine Arts at Goddard College, I have tried to make images that successfully combine “speech” (the crafted elements of visual design) with “story” (revealed creative meaning). I look for artistic raw material in the natural, cultural, and built environments to make creative, involving images that ask viewers to read them in depth. I was a painter, printmaker, and analog photographer before the advent of digital tools; so, my approach to photography continues to value technical craftsmanship and the standards of design, history, and philosophy that I learned early on. Later, I was involved in post-grad studies in computer science when digital technology supplanted wet-process photography. I was an early convert to digital and have not looked back. The unique combination of freedom and control that are possible using digital tools has made it possible for me to create the images that I see in my imagination, in the depth and complexity that I need.
I work mainly in photomontage, often on topical social themes and creative re-visions of reality. I like to build an image in layers, with parts of several different source images, using digital tools to blend components together. As much as possible, I try to eliminate any overt collage effect, preferring to let content rather than technique provide the aesthetic friction in an image. The literary arts strongly motivate my visual art practice and I connect with Pynchon, Borges, and Barthelme in the same way in which I connect with Arbus, Cartier-Bresson, and Uelsmann. Accordingly, I always delight in working with writers and the “literate” press.
For years, I have been working on a project that I call “Road Ways” which is made up of images that imaginatively revisit places from my past. Distinct from quick vacation “snaps” or saturated national-geo vistas, these are meant to conjure a deeper sense of place, images of the landscapes, or the seasons, or the rooms, or the faces that one sees when he looks inward, creative fictions that work as well, or better, than facts. The image here, from “Road Ways”, draws material from central and southwest Florida, where I grew up, ran away, and returned.
My portfolio website’s address is http://www.vianovaphoto.net . Online sales, custom printing and framing are at http://www.rogerleege.net
To remind everyone here is the Week 13 photograph from Roger Leege and the winning poem written in response by Sarah Miles.
Psalm 23
The house is alive with pealing laughter and familiar notes
Accompany the lightness of Sunday release.
The smell of succulent lunch wafts through the corridors
Dancing on the eddies of Father’s rendition of ‘We plough the fields and scatter’.
Buoyant from a good sermon, he returns to us, eyes twinkling,
‘How was I today?’
We roll our eyes whilst our mother nods at him and whispers words of balm
His collar discarded, he opens his arms as our father.
In heaven.
For today we scattered his ashes.
The stained-glass window tells the story of our grief,
Drained and empty, we have nothing to say.
I sit and stare at the keys.
Feathery fingers trace the pattern of his hands, longing for his guidance.
Chalky light fills the room and I wonder if…
But the shadows cast are dark and cancerous,
The moon is no match for them.
Sarah Miles
