Frank Winters is an award winning fine art photographer. He moved to Olympia in 2019 with his wife, Aurora, and is creating art that reflects his new surroundings. Originally from New York City where he photographed on the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn, including Coney Island. When he lived in Massachusetts, he showed his work at The Provincetown Art Association and Museum, The Cotuit Center for the Arts, The Cape Cod Museum of Art (three of his photographs are in their permanent collection) and several other galleries. Here in Olympia he has shown work at the Leo Fuller Gallery of SPSCC, Art Journey and other local galleries and shops. His photography is influenced by his love of poetry and the visual arts, particularly abstract and surrealist painting. Frank and his wife have a large extended family, most living in Washington State, the reason they moved to Olympia was to be able to see them more often. The move to a new environment has been exciting and stimulating for them, affording many artistic opportunities.
"THIS WORLD WE LIVE IN IS BUT THICKENED LIGHT." EMERSON
Quotidian, liminal, transcendent; these are states I see in the world as my perception and the light vacillates. Light has the power to give the quotidian transcendent properties. I seek the surreal, capturing that quality is my goal.
In my photography, I use light to cast the ordinary in extraordinary terms. When light is unusually focused, or especially diffused, or particularly brilliant I pounce. It is a process of triangulation — object(s), geometry, light — when these three factors converge. I seize the fleeting opportunity.
My work is inspired by poetry and Transcendental writing such as the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote above and this one by a relative of Ralph Waldo:
"Do not be caught by the sensational in nature, as a coarse red-faced sunset, a garrulous waterfall, or a fifteen-thousand-foot mountain... avoid prettiness - the word looks much like pettiness - and there is but little difference between them." Henry Peter Emerson.
I rarely travel specifically to photograph, instead, I photograph anywhere I am, including elevators, church, and men's rooms. With a camera, or no camera, I frame, frame, frame, attempting to freeze a chaotic, ambiguous world. While I enjoy creating images of serenity and order, to me the most successful result is not order from chaos but an ambiguous, intriguing rendition of the chaos and surrealism at the moment the shutter was opened.
