Artist Statement for Otto Kitchens

I photograph because I have a passion for it. It's that simple.

I have struggled in the past to find the right words to describe what drives much of my art. And then I read an article on the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi: finding magic in the ordinary...in the flawed. As Leonard Loren said: "Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things unconventional." Wabi-sabi is what I seek when I explore an abandoned factory or walk the streets of a city or find a deserted house in a field.

"Wabi-sabi is an intuitive appreciation of a transient beauty in the physical world that reflects the irreversible flow of life in the spiritual world. It is an understated beauty that exists in the modest, rustic, imperfect, or even decayed, an aesthetic sensibility that finds a melancholic beauty in the impermanence of all things." Wabi-Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence, by Andrew Juniper

I shoot with a growing arsenal of film cameras, ranging from high precision cameras with multiple lenses to cheap plastic cameras to a very basic pinhole camera. I have a digital SLR that works quite well, but I just don't use it that much anymore. I love developing film and working in the darkroom, getting my hands wet so to speak. There is something magical about creating images in the analog world, and I just don't get that same feeling with digital. However, you might find images on here from a digital camera...my previous life, so to speak.

Although I got my first film SLR in high school, it wasn't until several years ago that I got very serious about photography. I got back into photography to record my travels, but it grew into a real passion as I realized that photography satisfied creative needs that I initially wasn't aware that I had. I lose time when I put a camera up to my eye. The world can just fall away except the scene in my viewfinder.

Recognition

The lens company Lensbabies™ recently selected two of my photos for use in their advertising. I have also had several photos place in juried competitions. My photoblog was inducted into photoblog.org's Hall of Fame. My site was a finalist for the best American photoblog in the 2007 Photoblog Awards and a finalist in the 2005 Best of Blog's Art/Photography category. I was one of the organizers for the 2007 North American Photobloggers Meet-up in Chicago.

Equipment

All photography on this site is © Otto Kitchens.
The unauthorized use of any images on this site is prohibited and will be litigated.