If you stand long enough you become a place is an artistic self-exploration by photographer John Atwood. Before coming into residence at The Watermill Center, Atwood will shoot 30 to 40 rolls of film and video in New York City over a concentrated period of two weeks. Using graphite sketches, he will work to recall the form and composition of specific shots before seeing the film developed so that he might reveal the instincts that brought them into being. By expanding the space between a photograph and the moment it is revealed upon development, the role of memory will be explored. Using still and moving images set against drawings and recollection, Atwood hopes to discover a new means of exhibiting his work and a greater understanding of his own artistic process.
John Atwood
John Atwood is a street photographer living and working in Chicago. His father was in the USAF and served during the conflict in Vietnam where he took many street style photographs while stationed in Saigon. Atwood vividly recalls seeing these images as a child. The truth of them never left him. He knew he had to be a photographer. There were images of a place he could not have dreamed of and they were so beautiful and strange. He wanted to create and live in those worlds.
Atwood bought his first camera when he was 17. He purchased it from a man who lived in a trailer on the north side of Springfield. It was a Canon AE-1. His father showed him the basic workings of the camera and gave him a book to read. The rest came with practice and time.
John Atwood works almost entirely in black and white film but occasionally uses color slide film and 8mm video.
He has exhibited twice thus far, once in 2003 of cibachrome prints from color slide film and most recently a twenty-five piece show of black and whites at 92yTribecca in Manhattan.
Atwood finds inspiration in the works of Kertez, Steiglitz, Bresson and Frank. He learned the most from Bresson but draws a lot, if not just as much, from painters like Degas and Hopper.
His work focuses on human beings in relationship to their constantly changing surroundings. Atwood’s aim as a photographer is to show man in relation to his own nature and creations and how we all struggle to find a place.
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