MARK HARMEL
Los Angeles, CA
mark@harmelphoto.com

Mark Harmel teaches and creates fine art works he calls Sightings. His newest series is the Desert Collection.

I consider myself an explorer. Not in the nineteenth century sense of being the first outsider to travel to previously unknown locations. I do survey the unfamiliar sometimes, yes, but also what some would consider familiar. But the familiar seen in a new and individual light is also the unfamiliar. My vision marries the creative with a personal photojournalism. More than documentary photography, the way a newspaper photo stills the moment, I strive to go beyond the documentary and elevate a scene into artistry. Because landscape, too, is about the moment, a light wave crashing. Capturing the sunset at Monument Valley, a Mojave superbloom, or the melding of intense blue dappled sky with blazing White Sands dunes, is not so different from capturing action and movement in an urban environment. The lens is just incrementally directed, narrowed to frozen seconds even if in the grandest Southwestern setting imaginable and shot in large-scale panoramic format. When a photograph becomes a singular experience, it can, like a Ring of Fire eclipse or conversation between a Joshua Tree standing boulder and a juniper, stop time as well as your breath. I’ve taken to road trip expeditions, shooting whatever and whoever I encounter along the way to and from a chosen destination—Americana and the world. Whatever my original intention, the focus could change, could widen or stop-down. Every sighting has the potential to be a revelation.

NOTABLE

KEE Gallery, Gallery 825, TAG Gallery, Josh Mitchell Art Gallery, Communications Arts 2005 - Louis Stern Fine Arts Gallery
APA 2004 Best of Show - G. Ray Hawkins Gallery