Arthur Tress

Although Arthur Tress's work is visually different from my work, his photographs still deal with a similar concept. His work places much importance on the subjects actions and locations in the shots. I love the small details in his photographs, such as the sun outlining one of the figures in the second image down. The images have an erie quality, yet the images are not out of the ordinary subjects and there is nothing distinctly different about the subjects. Somehow though, through the lighting, angles, etcetera, he is able to produce an alternate reality from reality.


Biography:

"Arthur Tress was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY on November 24, 1940. He took his first photographs while still in elementary school in 1952. He attended Bard College where he studied art and art history, world culture and philosophy under Heinrich Bluecher. While studying, he continued to photograph and began making short films. He graduated in 1962 with a B.F.A.  After graduation from Bard, Tress moved to Paris to attend film school, but soon left. After traveling through Europe, Egypt, Japan, India and Mexico, he settled in Stockholm, Sweden and worked as a photographer at the Stockholm Ethnographic Museum. In 1968 he moved back to New York with a commitment to becoming a professional photographer. He had his first one-person exhibition that year, "Appalachia--People and Places", which was held at the Smithsonian Institute and the Sierra Gallery (New York City). He then worked as a documentary photographer for V.I.S.T.A. from 1969-1970. Arthur Tress was one of the first artists in the 1970s to break way from street photography and develop a more personal vision, which included manipulating that realty in front of him instead of being just a passive observer."

 - Alex Novak  (Novak, Alex. "Arthur Tress." Rev. of Arthur Tress. Web log post. Contemporary Works. Web. 17 Oct. 2010. <http://www.contemporaryworks.net/artists/artist_bio.php/1/6606>.)

Quotes: 

"Photography has an amazing ability to capture the fine detail of surface textures. But far too often these intricate patterns are loved by the photographer for their own sake. The richness of texture fascinates the eye and the photographer falls easy prey to such quickly-caught complexities. The designs mean nothing in themselves and are merely pictorially attractive abstractions. A central problem in contemporary photography is to bring about a wider significance in purely textural imagery." - Arthur Tress 

"I’ll push myself to complete a series, because sometimes when you get to the end of your rope, you can go beyond and actually invent something new – something you hadn’t seen before." - Arthur Tress

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