About

Robert Bridges

Contemplative Photography

About

BIOGRAPHY

I was educated in the “backyard school” of photography and am largely self-taught. Still, I owe gratitude to Minor White, Edward Weston, Ernest Hass and Freeman Patterson for inspiration, and to Dency Kane, Ian Adams, and Nancy Rotenberg for encouraging me and helping me learn to shoot from the heart.

I am a former member of ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers) and spent years working as an editorial, stock, and commercial photographer. I have taught photography at various community colleges in Colorado and New Mexico, and my work has been published in numerous publications.

EDUCATION

I am formally trained in philosophy, theology, and psychology, with Master’s degrees in Counseling Psychology and Religious Studies, and a Ph.D., in the Psychology of Religion. I have extensive experience as a group facilitator.

My principal educational experience, however, has come from spending countless hours on my knees in the dirt, learning patience and humility, watching the dance of movement and light, exploring and enjoying the sensuality of the moment, asking myself “what if,” and trying to see through the eyes of a child.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Art, for me, is increasingly a process of opening the self such that more often the medium becomes less obvious and the light within more luminous.

I approach photography as a sacred art. I practice macro-photography. Gardens are my sanctuaries. Flowers are my muses. When I gaze at a flower I don’t see “Iris” or “Dahlia,” rather, I become absorbed in color, shape, textures, movements of light and shadow all dancing. Sometimes, when I manage to slow my mind down to around 1/25th of a second, magic happens.

I create using in-camera multiple exposures. This technique, among other things allows for a recording of “reality” that is impressionistic, soft, abstract, and invites the dynamics of movement, light, chance, and time. Thus each image is truly unique. All the work occurs in natural light and conditions. I do not use flash, filters, or reflectors. Whatever magic that happens, happens elsewhere.