Artist statement
From decades of work, I came to understand that because our emotional responses are based in time, if I want to express the emotion I felt (as opposed to the emotion felt by the subject, or a generalized abstract emotion) at the time the photograph was made, that I must also encode the element of time within the image. Using the camera’s unique ability to “average time” through long exposures ranging from 20 seconds to 60 minutes, I am able to reveal what is felt but generally unseen. This process eliminates what I have termed “visual noise.” For example, “Storrow Drive” was a ten-minute exposure in Boston during which 579 cars, 19 joggers, 7 pedestrians, 5 rollerbladers, 4 bicyclists, a pair of twins in a stroller and 1 dog passed in front of the camera, but those fleeting visitors to the scene only distract us from the essence of the place. With my camera, I am able to encode the element of time within the image and thereby translate this hidden world into a visible form for us to contemplate.
DAVID FOKOS, born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1960, received his first camera – a Kodak Brownie – when he was 11 years old. He has worked with a view camera – a 5×7 at first, and later an 8×10 – for over 30 years. For the first 15 years, Fokos photographed in isolation on the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard. It was during this time that the current style of his work began to emerge. Fokos’s work has since been the subject of over 50 solo exhibitions and can be found in many private, corporate and museum collections. He is currently represented by fifteen galleries on three continents. Mr. Fokos currently resides in San Diego, California where he makes his living as a photographic artist.
