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Gary Wagner
Gary’s professional career spans more than three decades and includes, fine art, portrait, and commercial photography. His knowledge, expertise, and enthusiasm for the photographic image enabled him to successfully teach theory and technique at the college level and seminars in Europe on the English country landscape.
Michéla Griffith
In 2012 I paused by my local river and everything changed. I’ve moved away from what many expect photographs to be: my images deconstruct the literal and reimagine the subjective, reflecting the curiosity that water has inspired in my practice. Water has been my conduit: it has sharpened my vision, given me permission to experiment and continues to introduce me to new ways of seeing.
We’ve previously featured Gary Wagner’s images in a 4x4 portfolio. Gary, who lives in California, works exclusively in black and white and has been making images for over 30 years using film and now digital cameras. An understanding of light links his commercial work and his personal landscape photography which he talks about more for us in this issue.
Can you tell readers a little about yourself – your education, early interests and career? How and when did you first become interested in photography?
I currently work full time as a fine art photographer specialising in black and white landscape photography. I live in Northern California and have easy access to the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the California coast both of which are favourite subjects for my landscape photography. I have been making black and white images of the landscape for over three decades previously using an 8x10 view camera with sheet film and now with a digital camera.
I first became interested in photography while working on my high school newspaper. At that time I was taking photos for the school paper and photos for my own enjoyment of rural backroads of Midwestern, USA. Most of my work was in black and white as I developed and printed the images at home in a makeshift darkroom. My early years in photography were about learning the craft of photography and developing my vision as a photographer and an artist.