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From There/When to Here/NowGrowing up in Marin County--exploring the ridges, waterfalls and canyons of our back yards-- instilled in me a love for the search of the new and unexpected. Stretching my limits laid a great foundation for my life as an inquisitive artist always wanting to experiment.I studied art throughout high school and photography as a senior. I continued to study art at the College of Marin, although oddly enough I choose not enroll in the photography program, which in retrospect was I believe an important tuning point in my development as a young artist. As many at my young age, I was certain that I had all the answers and needed no teaching. While I now am sure that was far from the case, it did allow me to develop my own ideas without any obstacle. As a result I feel my growth natural and innocent, unpolluted by outside influences. |
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| My first exposure to photography came early in life when as a youngster I helped my dad at his commercial photo business in Fairfax where we grew up. There was always a camera around the house and I used it at every opportunity. In my early teen years we built a darkroom in the garage and I was off and running. The darkroom became my constant hangout and with my two friends started GlassEye Photoworks. We did small jobs and taught ourselves by trial and error.
As time went on, I worked at Berkey Photo and later at Faulkner Color Lab, both in San Francisco. During this period my personal work consisted of black and white photography, I idolized Ansel Adams and believed that I would never shoot color. But in my late twenties the world of color photography opened to me, and I became fascinated with landscape photography, fueled by trips to the Sierras , Hawaii and hiking every where I could. I found water a wonderful subject and photographed it extensively. At this point in my life I began to feel an urge to reinvent myself and started to view most of my past works as boring, tired and somewhat unimaginative and that I really had become overly influenced by artists whose work I admired and respected. So in somewhat of a rash moment I destroyed all the old work determined to start anew and work from my heart. In the early 80's, I went the American Southwest for the first time. And my life as an artist changed forever and Larry R. Davidson Photography was born. Something happened to me in New Mexico that I can only describe as artistic inspiration. Suddenly I looked at everything differently, everything. I began to notice small delicate things and shades of color that I never saw before. It was at this point that I began to exhibit my work and actually felt like an artist. Street fairs, restaurants, coffee shops, private gatherings, galleries -- anything to show and talk about my work, and the joy of the sale! When someone takes my work home it is the most complete feeling I know as an artist, validation of a vision and the process that brings it to the surface. During this time the work that I was most excited about was often described as architectural. Although I always felt that while this was a not unfair description something was missing. True most of these images were of buildings and man-made structures, but more importantly not what they were but what they became as a result of my photographic vision. Lately my work has shifted into more and more interpretive pieces, subject matter becoming less and less important and the creation of an altered state of looking at things that finds beauty, mystery and intrigue in the most simple moments. Thus was born my continuing collection of photographs of corrugated metal, eclectic, colorful and slightly unexpected. I continue to live and work as a dedicated artist in pursuit of that next great image.. Larry R. Davidson |
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