Artist Statement

I found the camera in 2003. It took over my life, without study, except two straight years of shooting every day. I would that any viewer enter the photos without hesitation and allow a wander. There are titles on all, but, surely they don’t intend to confine meaning or even confine my attempt to represent and lift a reality into a wandering space. They’re part of the work. Two things: (1) “The camera doesn’t matter. It’s the eye.” Romantic. Wrong. It matters to me, fully. How arrogant to detach from the medium! Things and people respond differently to the fixed parameters of the 1950 Kodak Brownie Hawkeye. I’ve never “stolen” a photo. People see it. I acknowledge. They continue naturally. Inanimate objects are seen in angles we don’t use today. An instrument that doesn’t, itself, inspire wonder or facilitate new angles that don’t require my face pressed against it (or even close to it), operates on a different plane—one that must find its own art. (2) Long exposure. This is the method: no flash, holding the camera perfectly still (with earth as best tripod for the flat-bottomed camera), then counting the exposure with a much more flexible and precise instrument: the mind. It’s more accurate than I can know—matching feeling to light conditions. I hold for whatever length of time feels proper, a half-second or thirty seconds. I can physically feel the environment, unifying camera, scene, photographer. This is a unity, a continuum I think necessary. The result is what starts with what the eye sees, preserves it as the eye sees it, then moves into what I imagine.

Eric J. Henderson, Tiny Klansman (2013) Gelatin silver print (20” x 20”)

Eric J. Henderson, Bed-stuy Tends to Crater (2012) Gelatin silver print (20” x 20”)

Eric J. Henderson, They Are Coming! (Alexis Julliard, model) (2009) Gelatin silver print (30” x 30”)

Eric J. Henderson, Margaret Ann. Church. (2009) Gelatin silver print (12” x 12”)