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Christopher Fowler
UNITED STATES
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“I have quite literally spent my entire childhood drawing.”
Christopher B. Fowler started out as a graphic artist. As he believes, he was fortunate that his father was a high school librarian, and that played a big role in developing his artistic skills. When Christopher was in school, his father forwarded every single memo, bulletin, and announcement that came to the library to him to draw at the back of. It’s how his father kept him in touch with paper.
Morning Comes to Lahaina | Color Photography
$279
Lahaina is the former royal capital of Hawaii on Maui. This was taken looking back towards the so-called "Maui Mountains", the remains of the volcano that created Western Maui. The smokestack is a former sugar cane rendering plant.
Fowler eventually became interested in making animated movies—essentially the idea of bringing his drawings to life thrilled him and that is what made him love animations so much. He then shifted over to making live-action movies at the time, which was also the golden age of Super-8 home movie films.
Lanai Shoreline | Color Photography
$279
Lanai is one of the Maui islands of Hawaii. The dark volcanic soil, the almost dreamlike grasses growing from it, the sea and surf were what I wanted to convey. I can all but feel the breeze blowing still.
While he was still exploring the artist in himself, Fowler became more aware of and interested, specifically in cinematography—a now little-watched film of Ingmar Bergman’s, “The Touch” (Sven Nvkvist was the cinematographer), was a particular inspiration for him.
“Dylan Thomas said that art is about telling the truth and I always incorporate the same in my work.”
Fowler can’t now remember whether he wrote for, or just seriously thought about writing for, the application to the New York University Film School—with his father’s blessing; his father said he thought Fowler had “the eye”—but in the end, Fowler lost my nerve and, instead, went to the small liberal arts college that most of his family before him had gone to.
Valley of Ash | Color Photography
$279
This is the floor of the Haleakala volcano on Maui. Amazing to think this is all volcanic rock with just the different trace minerals within it making the colors.
This is on the northeastern end of Maui and best conveys, to my mind, not the tourist/paradise Hawaii, but, rather, the ancient Hawaii watched over by its ancestral spirits.
Kahakuloa Point | Color Photography
$279
Call it his luck or simply just destiny, even after Christopher joined the liberal arts college, his Freshman advisor was a professor who was himself interested in filmmaking, so he hadn’t yet entirely given up the idea. Filmmaking still had its roots firmly in the artist’s mind.
“The image of that flatiron building has been on my wall ever since in one form or another and remains the ‘ghost’ I am constantly chasing in my own work.”
“Another quote that deeply resonates with me is from Georgia O’Keeffe, who said what appeals to us about mountains and rocks and trees is not that they’re mountains and rocks and trees, but rather the lines, planes, and textures they present to us.”
It was while he was in college that the Metropolitan Art Museum had a retrospective show of the photographer Edward Steichen and Newsweek magazine, which Christopher was buying at the time. It devoted a full page to his famous early-color photograph of the flatiron building.
Kapalua | Color Photography
$239
This is on the northwestern coast of Maui. I can still hear the crashing of the surf, and feel the warm sun and the strong winds blowing by me.
The other particular event in his development as an artist occurred when the Philadelphia Museum of Art held a retrospective in the early ‘80s for the painter Thomas Eakins. His use of light and shadow, and, in particular, of raked light, continues to influence Christopher’s work.
The North Shoreline | Color Photography
$279
This is from an island in the Åland archipelago off the southwestern coast of Finland where my mother's family has their summer house. This conveys the extremes of the terrain out there, the granite shoreline shaped by the sea.
From his father, who, as a youth, used to walk from the Quaker Meeting in Washington, DC, the few blocks down to the Phillips Collection on Sundays is where Christopher acquired his love for the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe. And he, as much of the country, was captivated by the series of televised conversations in the late 1980s that Bill Moyers had with Joseph Campbell, the retired professor of comparative religion at Sarah Lawrence College, and, in particular, with Campbell’s idea that artists are the contemporary counterparts to a shaman in traditional societies.
This is an example of how you can surprise yourself with photography: I was concentrating on the rock and reed and didn't notice the water ripples from--I guess--a fish until I got back the enlargement.
Rock and Red Reed | Color Photography
$239
“I have sought inspiration from various famous photographers and painters, learning from their techniques and striving to incorporate them in my own work.”
The Big Red Rock | Color Photography
$279
A bit more inland, where, over time, the brush and grass have become better established. The rock, itself, has been there since the ice age, pushed into place by the glaciers.
The artist doesn’t use Photoshop or otherwise manipulate images, aside from cropping and, when needed, truing the horizontals. He doesn’t even use filters or a lot of different lenses, He, however, admits to having a zoom lens, but he tends to use it in the wide-angle length so as to get the greatest possible depth of focus.
Two more "glacial deposits", which have been there (of course) as long as we've been coming to the island. The leaves are from birches, which, along with spruces and service-berries, grow where what soil as there is allows it.
Old Friends | Color Photography
$279
Christopher is not quite fond of manipulating his photographs, and it is one of the major reasons why his images are quite literally what he saw through the lens. They may not be technically sophisticated, but they are– or at least they are meant to be– deeply felt.
The Last Walk of the Day | Color Photography
$239
This, I think, best conveys the summer environment of the archipelago, taken on our last tour around the island before bed. The summers in Finland, as it's said, are short, but intense.
“A quote from Joseph Campbell says that it’s the task of the artist to convey the radiance behind the physical reality, and I always try to follow that.”
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