Rolfe Horn

The landscape has always attracted me on many levels. I am somewhat of a loner, so the quiet, meditative nature of sauntering about and searching for something in the land which “speaks” to me is appealing. The curiosity of “what is around the next bend” keeps me wanting to explore farther down the path. The opportunity to capture and share the vistas I have experienced is also extremely gratifying.

Human vision can only detect individual moments, so by photographing with long exposures, during twilight or night time, I am able to capture a series of moments on a single piece of film, effectively creating a static image by compressing time, which moves the photograph toward the sublime. The movement of water will blur, clouds can streak, stars trace their arcs and falling rain creates a unique atmosphere. The resulting photograph has more of an elastic feeling, as if time were stretched and then snapped back into a single instant.

The power of a photograph comes from its ability to record reality. However, with the advent of digital imaging, this power is completely diminished as the computer can convincingly reproduce “the cow jumping over the moon”. This is why I only use traditional methods for my work. Each print is handmade by passing light through a negative in an enlarger onto photographic paper in a darkroom. The image one sees actually happened in reality. There is no digital trickery; my photographs maintain their original integrity of witnessing truth.

I continue to reflect what it is that makes me stop at a given place to take a photograph. A scene must contain visual harmony and something unique that gives me pause. There is a collision of light, subject and emotion which eventually culminates into an exposed piece of film, ultimately living on in the gelatin silver of a photographic print.

I hope you enjoy looking at the landscape as I interpret it.