Artist Statement
While architectural photographs are usually seen as illustrations of what a structure looks like, this is not my primary intent. Rather, I see beauty and mystery in these meetinghouses. I love the textures of the wood. I am impressed with their regularity and symmetry—they are beautiful in their austerity and simplicity. Perhaps romantically, I suspect these qualities reflect the lives of those who built them. Their religious beliefs were unambiguous and the simple lines of their meetinghouses reflect this.
In many ways, the location where each photograph was made is unimportant. I approach meetinghouses in much the same way that an artist who works with the human form approaches a model. It is not important what the person’s name is. Rather, the artist sees in the model a quality that can, when properly posed and lit, yield a piece of art. These meetinghouses are my “models” for making art, and my photographs reflect my emotional response to them – my physical location when I made each photograph is not of primary importance.
Process Statement
Selenium-toned silver prints from 4x5 negatives.
My photographs are first seen in my mind before they are made. My craft with working the camera, developing the negative, and making the print is then harnessed to produce the desired image. The slow pace of working with a traditional wooden field camera, sheet film, chemicals, and photographic paper causes me - forces me - to slow down and think. I enjoy the tactile quality of working with traditional photographic media. There is an intimacy in going under the dark cloth and looking at an upside-down image on the ground glass or in working in the darkroom on a snowy winter day. I hope that this feeling is reflected in my photographs. There is certainly a Zen-like quality to my pace of working, and I think my photographs are better for it. I know I am.
Paul Wainwright is a fine-art, large-format black & white photographer who lives and works in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Paul specializes in traditional, wet-process photography, and produces museum-quality prints for exhibition and collection. His portfolio includes interpretive images of landscapes and historic architecture. His work evokes a feeling of quietness and contemplation, and has been described as being reminiscent of some of the masters of the mid-20th century.
Paul has been juried into the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, NH., the Hubbard Museum of the American West in Ruidoso, NM, the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, CO, the Photomedia Center in Erie, PA, and the San Diego Art Institute in San Diego, CA. His work is in the collections of both private and corporate collectors, including the Boston Public Library, Fidelity Investments, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Paul has been making black & white photographs for more than 45 years. For a short time he considered majoring in photography in college, but instead he was drawn to physics, and earned a PhD from Yale. He enjoyed a lengthy and rewarding career in research at Bell Laboratories. All the while, however, photography provided an expressive outlet for him, and in 2001 he left Bell Labs to pursue his original love full time.
Paul’s first photography book, A Space for Faith: The Colonial Meetinghouses of New England, is now available. See www.aspaceforfaith.com.
About my prints:
All of my prints are exhibition quality, and are made from large-format 4x5 negatives. Each print is individually hand crafted using only archival materials and procedures. Starting from the negative, the image is fine tuned over several darkroom sessions to bring out the expressive feeling of the final print. I use only fiber-based paper, which has been shown over the years to be far more stable than the more modern resin-coated paper. I selenium tone each print to provide “depth” and archival permanence. Mounting and matting are done using only the finest, museum-quality mat board.
