Michael Bowman: Desolate Places

A great photograph shows the world as it is, not how it should be.

An artist’s expression is a culmination of all the experiences of their lives. The good. The bad. The ugly. The beautiful. It all gets absorbed into the brain and mashed together. The experiences are broken down to their basic levels, sometimes to such fundamental things as light and dark, and are reconstituted and reformulated. Later, these basic principles and formative experiences are found reflected in the real world and presented as they are in testament to those experiences, or the real world is manipulated to reflect the artist’s vision. Either way, that vision is a product of all the experiences of that artist’s life. For better or worse.

I will not go into the details of the experiences that have produced my vision. Suffice to say they have been good and bad, light and dark. They have produced a view of the world that is mine alone. It appeals to some. Repulses others.

I find beauty in things that others overlook or ignore. Places and people that have been abandoned, neglected or forgotten.