About

Artist Statement

The images I make today are the result of over 30 years of exploration and discovery in my quest to understand how we are affected by the world around us and how we perceive our environment.  It is my desire to express to the viewer the essence of my experience in these places – to evoke within them the same emotion I felt at the time of the exposure. Rather than show what these places look like, I want to show how they feel.

Drawing upon my scientific background in engineering and a decades-long interest in Japanese aesthetic traditions, I came to understand that, because our emotional responses are based in time, if I want to express the emotion I felt (as opposed to the emotion felt by the subject, or a generalized abstract emotion) at the time the photograph was made, then I must also encode the element of time within the image.

Through the use of long-exposures I have been able to encode the element of time into what would otherwise be a static image.  This process has the effect of stripping away the “visual noise” to reveal a world that, while very real, is not experienced visually.  We feel it.  We sense it.  But in general, we don’t see it. With my camera, I am able to translate this hidden world into a visible form for us to contemplate.

It is my hope that, in looking at my work, you may share with me the experience of these places.

David Fokos
2014