July 6 – 29, 1989
This unnamed series of diptychs were created between 1986-1989. Wanting to experiment with my photographic approach, I wished to complicate the visual experience by presenting a scene of landscapes, candids or environmental portraits as two parallel frames that are part of a continuous spectrum, but broken and disjointed at the same time. Double focus planes and vanishing points contribute to the complexity of these compositions.
I was inspired in part by my news photographer ancestors—dragging around large-format cameras and potato masher flashes–hand-held as if they were no big deal, and taking a single frame that was clean, well lit, and possessing almost objective, forensic quality imagery.
Working with my own 4×5 Crown Graphic with an on-camera Vivitar flash, I approached my subjects similarly. Using Singer six-frame film backs, I sometimes alternated sheets of color with sheets of black and white film. I then had to carefully separate the film in the dark, and send the film sheets to the correct development process. Afterwards, I hand printed them, again on either color or BW paper, assuring they would match up when mounted and framed. This whole process yielded almost one-of-a-kind final images. It was a painstaking process. (Most of what I show here are replicated digitally from the original film negatives.)
Steve Davis is a documentary portrait and landscape photographer based in the Pacific Northwest. His work has appeared in American Photo, Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, Russian Esquire, and is in many collections, including the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Seattle Art Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the George Eastman Museum. He is a 1st place recipient of the Santa Fe CENTER Project Competition, and two time winner of the Washington Arts Commission/Artist Trust Fellowship . Davis is the former Coordinator of Photography at The Evergreen State College, and currently teaches photography at South Puget Sound Community College. He is represented by the James Harris Gallery, Seattle.