ABOUT
One Christmas long ago, Santa wowed me with a little plastic picture-making doohickey that enabled me to set the "correct" exposure by aligning two needles. It released so much mental energy that I built a darkroom out of planks and cardboard in the cellar where I produced a pile of stiff, curling 4 x 5 inch, b&w prints, images of my family, house, dog, a car passing, no matter.. -- That enthusiasm gave way, though, to the demands, woes, and joys of school, athletics, girls, German, and later, Yale.. For the two years after the BA in 1971, due to work in psychiatric hospitals as a Conscientious Objector and long nights with Thomas Mann, I had no time or thought of photographic delights, nor during grad school at UC Berkeley starting in 1973. However, in 1979, I discovered a darkroom in my student dorm in Germany. Despite poverty deep enough to justify selling blood platelets regularly, I loved making pictures enough to spend money on gizmos and supplies. When I fell into violently passionate, unrequited love of a fine lady, photography helped me cope (one result:: #1 in *Matrices*). That did it. Thereafter, I slowly built a view camera system that yielded "Black Ice" and "Shelter." However, when digital photography finally became possible, I recognized the arrival of a fresh photographic freedom. The move to New York City in 2012 brought me to the International Center for Photography, in whose courses tough and telling criticism stung me into making "A Bridge Re-imagined," the portfolio that gained me admission to Soho Photo Gallery. A second NY portfolio quickly and logically emerged, "One Scene, Many Seens." How glad I am, despite all the bad in the world, to be alive and here now!
stmacgilbert@gmail.com
EXHIBITIONS
- 2016 "One Scene, Many Seens" at Soho Photo Gallery, NYC
- 2015 "A Bridge Re-imagined" (January) and "Black Ice" (June) at Soho Photo Gallery
- 2008 "Mountain of Memory" at the C. G. Jung Center, Houston, TX