Charles is another participant in the Lishui Photo Festival.
Having met him in Portland, and really enjoying his work, I was pleased to see his inclusion in China.
His family fills the frame of his lens, watching who they are, how they grow and change over time. Broken into segments based on his camera, he defines his world by low and high resolution.
About the series -
“Low-Resolution Diary” is the second of three photographic series that form a 30-year diary of documentary portraits, mostly of my family. This project has driven almost all of my photography and remains a work in process. I can't say just how it got started, but I can say my first exposure as a teenager to Cartier-Bresson was life-changing.
The three series are defined by their media: 35mm monochrome (Tri-X Diary) through 2002; then small format digital (Low-Resolution Diary) 2003-2008; and currently medium format film (High- Resolution Diary) 2008-2009. Although I feel all the photographs emerge from the same point of view, each series is shaped differently by its format.
The Low-Resolution series was photographed digitally with a tiny camera that allowed me to unobtrusively capture fleeting situations that might otherwise have been missed or disrupted. The pictures are printed at a fairly large scale, at which the coarse character of the camera’s output becomes integral with the image, imposing a degree flatness and abstraction. Although some of the images may appear constructed, they are entirely documentary.
The High-Resolution seris is photographed on relatively larger and slower 6x7cm film. The resulting images are more static, formal, and perhaps more classically photographic in character than the earlier series. There are three key things I have been trying to accomplish: to capture a “live” documentary moment within a formal composition; to evoke a real environmental space; and to reveal the subject in a sense that is neither momentary nor expected.
