David Fokos
Featured Speaker,   November 2006 Meeting

Topic: Conveying Emotion

David Fokos’s presentation will be “Conveying Emotion”. David has exhibited his work at the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, Galerie Kashya Hildebrand, Zurich, Switzerland, Kashya Hildebrand Gallery, New York, NY, Anchorage Museum of History and Art, Anchorage, AK, and Paul Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles, Ca as well as many others. David has been featured in B&W Magazine, View Camera Magazine, and Photographer’s Forum Magazine and numerous others. Vsit his website at www.davidfokos.net.

Artists Statement:

For 25 years I have used my camera as a tool to study the mechanics of human perception. I have asked myself: what is the physiological mechanism of experience? How does our perception differ from what we see? And why is it that our photographs so rarely express what was felt at the time the exposure was made?

Using long exposures, ranging from 20 seconds up to 60 minutes, I have worked with the camera’s unique ability to “average time” in order to examine and understand how we perceive our environment, and to reconcile our subjective and objective views of the world.

Specifically, I have tried to filter out what I call the "visual noise" of everyday life in order to reveal the fundamental, underlying forms of our world -- it is these forms that I think we respond to on a visceral level. I have come to believe that our impression of what we see is built up over time - a composite of many short-term events. For example, if you meet someone for the first time, your impression of that person is not a snapshot in your mind of the first time you saw that person, but rather a portrait you have assembled from many separate moments. Each time that person exhibits a new facial expression or hand gesture, you add that to your impression of who that person is. Your image of that person - how you feel about that person -- is formed over time, rather than upon a single expression or gesture.

Likewise, I believe that our impression of the world is based upon our total experience. For example, the ocean has always made me feel calm, relaxed, and contented. If I were to take a snapshot of the ocean, the photo would include waves with jagged edges, salt spray, and foam. This type of image, while very dynamic, does not make me feel calm - it doesn't represent how the ocean makes me feel as I stare out over the water. Instead, I am responding to the underlying, fundamental form of the ocean, the ocean's vast expansiveness and the strong line of the horizon, both of which are very stable, calming forms. Using my camera, I have tried to reveal these forms - forms that, while often obscured by the visual noise of everyday life, have a profound influence upon us.