Artist Statement
Over thirty five years of intense outdoor activity carrying a camera has covered a lot of ground. I've hiked, climbed, rafted, rappelled, boated, driven, flown, backpacked—any means to get to what's out there, all with camera on hand. When something striking appears, I try to show what it means to me, how it feels to be alive and living. Within my landscape work, major themes include Ancestral Pueblo dwellings and rock art, Wheatcountry and Grasslands, each published by Nazaraeli Press.
Process Statement
Large format 4x5, black and white film, gelatin silver prints available in sizes from 4x5 to 30x40, high quality PDF's, traveling exhibits of 30x40 inch prints. Licensing rights available.
Don Kirby literally grew up turning the surface of the earth upside down—on his parent’s sharecropper farms in Northwestern Missouri. Failing in that enterprise, his family moved to other work as he studied math and physics in college with a beginning interest in photography. Emerging with advanced math and science degrees, he moved to the West Coast and began a career in aerospace. Escaping frequently from the city to maintain sanity, he became a backpacker, mountain climber, and river runner, always carrying a slide camera to document his and his friend’s activities. A decade and a half later, for reasons still not clear, B/W film replaced slides, subject matter changed, a darkroom was built, and serious study of expressive photography began, utilizing workshops by Bruce Barnbaum, John Sexton, Ansel Adams, and ultimately teaching with Bruce, Huntington Witherill, Jay Dusard, and Stu Levy. Aerospace was abandoned a few years later.
Don’s photography in the ensuing 37 years has been landscape oriented, concentrating on the lands west of the 100th meridian. Major projects include over 20 years (1989 to the present and continuing) of periodic work on the Ancestral Pueblos of the Colorado Plateau, 15 years (1991-2006) in the Wheatcountry of the Northwestern US, and lately 5 years (and continuing) in the National Grasslands and other grasslands in the US. Most recently he has begun a series of projects focused in Santa Fe.
Don’s photographs have been exhibited in more than fifty individual and group exhibits. Additionally, his photographs are included in the collections of the George Eastman House, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Joy of Giving Something, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Portland Art Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, and private collections.
Nazraeli Press published Wheatcountry in 2001, You’re not really initiated... in 2002, Grasslands in 2009 and The Anasazi Project in 2012.
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