Water View heathpaleyphoto.com/waterview.html


One of my photos, Window Seats, was selected for inclusion in the Portland Museum of Art, 2011 Biennial (Portland, Maine), and has been purchased by the Museum for its permanent collection. heathpaleyphoto.com/embankment.html


My photo, Curved, won first place in the Water category in the 2010 Maine Photography Show (judged by John Paul Caponigro) in Boothbay, Maine. heathpaleyphoto.com/curves.html




After World War II my left liberal Jewish New Yorker parents settled on a farm, not back-to-the-land, just making a break with family–starting off on their own. At subsequent Seders in the City we were the hicks who had nearly fallen off the back edge of Saul Steinberg’s map. So not surprisingly, in 1969 during my senior year at college, I turned in my 2-S deferment as a marker of privilege and was quickly drafted into the US Army. But the Army found that it didn’t care for anti-war agitators–two years later, my Bad Conduct Discharge in hand, I was free.

Photography came early and late, straddling marriage, children, careers and thirty years of the accumulated observations of an outlander–wet black and white in the 1970’s and dry digital color in 2005.

For me, a photograph transcends its surrogate nature by delineating the unfamiliarity of the commonplace. As a document infused with subjective knowledge, it can have a profound impact, both aesthetically and as an antidote to our aloof alienation from the physical world, thus helping to rebuild the integrity of our senses and lending some coherence to our thoughts. Restoring a link between humans and the animate world is an initial step toward the rebalancing of our relationship with the earth and its other inhabitants.

I work with large format images. Everything about them is large: the number of pixels, the size of the files, the dimensions of the prints. However, these large format photographs are composed of many very small details: the threads in a seat cushion, the label on a window, the pattern of bricks in a wall.

The perception of these myriad elements draws me outward. The images I create document each of these details, the relationships between them, and them and me. If the image is clean, decisive and honest it can also be a vehicle to immerse the viewer, initiating a transcendence of the flat two-dimensional photographic world–an enlargement of experience.

I view myself as a “straight” photographer even though my images are highly manipulated. First, they are all stitched together on a computer from individual 35 millimeter shots–some are made up of as many as 42 separate pictures. Then there are many hours of layers, masks and adjustments in Photoshop (Photoshop is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc.), time spent counteracting the impact of the mechanical personality of the camera, which modifies and distracts from my original vision. Ansel Adams defined a photographic print as an, “Equivalent…the image created later.”

My goal is the creation of Equivalents that push me and push the viewer into closer connection with the animate world–not some idealized or natural version–but the world we pass through daily. I want Equivalents that expose the unfamiliarity of the commonplace and thus momentarily shatter our habitual way of seeing and feeling.

The intended size of these images makes them difficult to display on the web. All of the images are presented with their largest dimension (either the width or the height) set at 1000 pixels, so they appear relatively similar in size. They are displayed in this way so that they will fit on the normal computer monitor without a lot of scrolling. The actual sizes, however, vary greatly–the smallest (when printed at the standard size) is 24" by 16", and the largest is 84" by 24". One drawback to setting the largest dimension at 1000 pixels is that the wider panoramas appear small when compared to the more narrowly focused images. I have chosen to use Zoomify (Zoomify is a registered trademark of Zoomify, Inc.) to help mitigate this predicament because it allows me to display the images with a maximum dimension of 1000 pixels, but also gives the viewer the ability to zoom in on the detail that is the backbone of the image. In order for Zoomify to work you must have Flash Player v6 or higher installed on your computer.

The standard print size for each image is listed on its item page along with where and when it was taken. The print prices are based on the size of the standard print. All of these images can be printed in a different size (larger or smaller) as long as the proportion between the width and the height remains the same. If you would like a print in a different size, it will be priced accordingly. To order a custom sized print please contact me via email or phone.

Please go to: heathpaleyphoto.com/info1.html for more information about my photography.

I welcome any comments or questions that you might have about the images shown here. You can contact me at: heath@heathpaleyphoto.com