March 10, 2018 through April 10, 2018
Austin Granger • Correspondence
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Austin Granger Artist Talk – 3/10/18
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Austin Granger is a prolific image maker living in the great northwest in Portland, Oregon. “Correspondence” is a personal narrative of imagery from his daily wanderings. A very insightful and inventive image maker, Austin carries an array of favorite traditional film cameras with him everywhere. We are happy to present 60 Platinum/Palladium Prints, filling the LightBox walls with wonderful handmade prints of Austin’s beautiful work.
“When I’m photographing well, I have the most uncanny feeling that the pictures are predestined. I recognize them. They echo the feelings inside myself. They correspond. My subjects are the things that ache.
Whether or not I can portray feelings using objects that may not ostensibly depict those feelings is something that I wrestle with. People see things differently. After all, we bring our minds–all of those thoughts that make us–to our looking at things. In a very real way, pictures are always of our heads. They’re all self-portraits. Still, I’d like to think that it’s possible to put something across, to bridge the gap, meet a stranger in the middle, and connect. After all, do we not all share the same basic, existential struggles? Fundamentally, deep down, are we not all made of the same stuff?
Perhaps then, by going inward, one goes outward as well. Perhaps one can approach the universal through the individual. I’d like to think so. I’ve come to think of my pictures as an attempt to understand myself, and also, as an attempt to communicate. I want to express emotions that people will recognize. I want my pictures to be a correspondence between us, to be both the place and the record of our meeting.” ~ Austin Granger
Biography
Austin Granger is the author of Elegy from the Edge of a Continent: Photographing Point Reyes. Born in San Francisco in 1970, Granger has worked as a baker, house painter, naval radar operator and camera salesman. He first began to photograph while studying philosophy in college as a way to get out of his head. Preferring to use traditional film cameras, Granger has come to see his photography as a spiritual practice–a way in which to shape his life and enrich his relationship with the world.
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