Featured Artist
Jeff Corwin

Over the years, Jeff Corwin has taken photos hanging out of a helicopter over the Thames River, in the jungles of Borneo, on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and the Italian aircraft carrier Garibaldi while photographing Harrier Jet missions over the Tyrrhenian Sea for Rolls-Royce. He has done photo shoots in 41 countries/5 continents, including in Moscow with two retired KGB agents with AK-47’s accompanying him and Belfast, Northern Ireland in the mid-80’s. Assignments included portraits of famous faces, including Bill Gates, Cesar Chavez, Ray Bradbury, LA Police Chief Daryl Gates, Michael Graves and Vanna White, and photos for corporate clients like Microsoft, Dell, Apple, Boeing, Lockheed, AT&T and Time/Life. His hottest photo shoot: Abu Dhabi at 114 °F. The coldest: Flin Flon, Manitoba, Canada at -40 °F.

After 40+ years as a commercial photographer, Corwin has turned his eye to fine art photography, primarily landscape vistas. He brought the same vision forward, creating photographs grounded in design. Also, his early formal studies with Arnold Newman, environmental portrait master in Rockport, Maine, provided him with solid technical bedrock that still serves him. For Corwin, a recognition of what personally resonates – a reaction to experience, spirit and instinct, as well as simplicity, graphic forms and strong configurations that repeat are what “do it” for him. The seeds were sown about 15 years ago during an assignment in the sparse eastern part of Washington State. He began to recognize the visual triggers. A black asphalt road cutting for miles through harvested wheat. An empty, snowy field with a stream curving to a single tree. A small barn, the roof barely visible above a barren hillside. Yet his landscapes do not look the way they do strictly because of the locations. Corwin gravitates to the stark and isolated vistas because they speak to him. It is what he sees because it is what he feels.

Trusting his vision is extremely important to Corwin. His experience has taught him not to second guess elements like composition or content. That does not mean he is opposed to enhancing what he sees. After many years of shooting landscapes without any tools other than a camera, Corwin began to do what he did for his commercial work – artificially light subjects by bringing powerful strobes into the landscapes. This augmentation stayed true to the essence of the scene while heightening the surface tension. After decades of photographing in B/W, he began introducing color into his photography and landed on a technique that is more painterly and interpretive, with colors muted and shifted in temperature.

After my father passed away in 2007, I came across 3 vintage handguns I never knew he owned. Torn between the fact they belonged to my father and my own feelings regarding U.S. policy on gun control, I decided to store them in a lock box and revisit the guns at another time. In late 2012, the horrifying murders in Sandy Hook happened. It occurred to me then that I had never dealt with the guns and was ready to get rid of them. A friend suggested that I first photograph them.

In 2013, I lay the guns out on my studio worktable – and circled and stared at them for days, but I felt no emotional connection. After experimenting with strobes and different approaches in black and white, a square piece of rusty, painted metal with a round yellow flaking shape in the middle caught my eye. I placed a gun on top and took a test shot in color. It was then that something snapped, a sense of moving in the right creative direction. Hours were spent wandering antique stores and junkyards looking for props to build the mini sets for Guns in America.

The lighting was a paramount component of the images: harsh illumination with loud, tweaked and saturated colors. While the stark colors of the photographs in Guns in America undergird my conviction about the absence of sane gun policy in the United States, the photos speak a truth shared by many. The images are not subtle. Nor is the subject matter and the violence inflicted by guns every single day. My intention in creating these images is not to dissuade anyone about the validity of the Second Amendment or gun ownership. A few people have commented to me that these photographs are a ‘problem,’ that I’m pitching for the government to ‘take our guns away.’What I am trying to do is bring an awareness to the need to save lives that are being taken in this country based on guidance that was provided in 1791.

more. www.jeffcorwinfineart.com

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