In 1973, I began my journey in the visual arts as a painter after perusing a book of paintings by the Belgian painter René Magritte. I was drawn to his unique Surrealist sensibility and his conviction that “the function of painting is to make poetry visible.” After after cranking out a number of Magritte-inspired pastiches, I became serious about art and painting, earning my bachelor of arts degree in studio art at UCI. Unable to put my painting skills to any lucrative use, I became active in filmmaking and took a class in photography at Orange Coast College, where I glimpsed photographs that completely changed my perspective. Images by photographers Eugène Atget, André Kertesz, Robert Frank and others inspired me to abandon painting and pursue photography as a form of fine art. The nature shots of Ansel Adams moved me little, while the poetic and otherworldly imagery of Ralph Gibson and Jerry Uelsmann became the inspiration to create images that took the mind beyond the visual imagery. As a Southern California native, the New Topographics images of fellow Newport Beach denizen Lewis Baltz also made a major impact on my sensibility. I diverged from those practitioners, however, in my quest for more surreal and otherworldly interpretations of the scenes I found and chose to photograph. In 1978, I saw an infrared photograph by Minor White and I found my chosen medium, a transcendental way of seeing that cast the everyday world into a new and mystical light.
In May 2018 and 2019, I travelled to France to gather new images and see what unique voice I could find among the many familiar scenes of Paris, Normandy, and the Loire Valley. I have chosen to use French titles, partly because the images are of France, and partly as an homage to the evocative (and often beautifully confounding) French titles of Magritte’s paintings. I also wish my images to evoke a sense of mystery and poetry that transcends the often mundane scenes and subjects they take as their point of departure.
As well as a Bachelor of Arts degree from UCI in studio art, I hold a Master of Fine Arts degree in motion picture and television production from UCLA. As a tenured professor for over thirty years at Chapman University in Orange, California, I taught filmmaking, cinematography, lighting, computer graphics, and photography. I have exhibited my award-winning photographic art since 1979, which graces the collections in both the USA and abroad.
-Richard Kendrick Ferncase, 2019