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Through The Mist	Lost Your Marbles?	Off The Top

The medium of photography is generally used to accurately record what is “out there” in consensus reality. Not so with David Ritchey's current work in which he strives to depict his “inner vision” and/or personal response to subjects. Many of the techniques he employs are intended to blur the distinctions between photographs and paintings. The resulting images, rather than providing the viewer with answers, tend to raise questions that can only be answered by introspection.

In his early work of the middle 1970s, his approach was that of a purist — medium format camera, wet darkroom, black and white prints… the whole nine yards. While he loosened up over the next ten years — beginning to use a 35 mm camera and working in color — he experienced frustration because the then current methodologies were not sufficiently flexible to permit him to create images that reflected what it was he saw “in his mind's eye.” In part because of this frustration, he set aside his photography for almost twenty years while he practiced Clinical Hypnotherapy.

By the early 2000s, the entire field of photography had changed radically with the advent of digital cameras, personal computers and image manipulation software. The photographer was no longer limited to strictly representational work, but now had available creative options (almost) as numerous as those available to the painter. David was again hooked!

Dusk, East Quoddy Light	Capstones Or Not	Road To Perdition