Since I Am Convinced
That Reality is in No Way
Real
How Can I Be Sure
That Dreams Are Dreams?

I live life through my eyes. I have always experienced profound pleasure from the act of looking and am constantly surprised and awed by what I see. I strive to share this awe through my photos. It seems that the main subject in my work is light, what it brings attention to and what it shadows. My photos are representational images of life the way I see it.

My poetry or stories is a part of my photographs, no matter the order of conception. The photograph is only a glimpse, a part, put it all together for a complete vision.

My photo art gives me a good reason for being outside the mainstream, an observer, a stranger, and sometimes an outlaw. This thought has given me the freedom that I don't believe I could have in any other field.

Alone in the studio is never really alone, even after the subject has left I have my images. I can and do change the photographs by introducing pos composition via cropping, double exposure, poetry or other modifications. Opportunity only comes once, ha! The weight and wonder of what I have done, what I have captured, continues forever.

My ancestors, the American Indians believed that if someone knew your name, they had a personal part of you. If they had taken your picture, they had a part of your soul. I believe this also, however I believe what I capture, I give back to the person so they can get to know themselves better. It also allows the world to know one viewpoint of that person.

It is very important to me to capture the image so well that someone who knows you says 'that really is you, I can see you better than before'. Some things are better left for someone else to find.

Everyone in the world is equal. We can all rise above our circumstance or choose to let life give us what it wishes. Everything has beauty. Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. We must reach beyond our failures. Photography is my way of declaring this to an unseeing world.

Why do I photograph is best answered by the question why do I breathe?

I think of my photographs as time frozen entities on which one can better see the flickering images of a heightened reality - one, which includes our dreams, memories, and visions in a poetic strory.

What is the distance between the eyes and the soul?

Hint: Does one photograph necessarily lead your thoughts to another that follows it? Sometimes one must take each sentence or photography, as it stands alone no matter where in the mix it is. You may want to read this again! A photograph is a window into an experience not just an object or paper.

Copyright 2010 - Tonya Nichols - BBT