People in the Meadowlands area will get a rare treat when West New York artist Joel Simpson displays a collection of geologically inspired photographs at the Flyway Gallery in Lyndhurst.
Simpson’s photographs of geological forms have been called “spectacular” and will be on display from Nov. 9 through Nov. 29.
Simpson finds that the parts are frequently greater than the whole when studying the geological structures that make up a landscape, whether it’s the Grand Canyon or the Adirondacks. Postcard views of scenic America rarely capture the dramatic and breathtaking beauty that the visitor sees in person. Simpson began to aim his camera at smaller areas that caught his attention.
“The key is to see forms and colors, not objects and things. Once I stopped trying to ‘sell’ a scene and captured what arrested my eye, I began seeing things left out of the nature tour books and postcard racks,” says Simpson. Simpson said he is always looking for new things.
“When I was a boy, I saw the woods around where I lived in Union, New Jersey, as an inexhaustible book of wonders,” he said. “I ventured out into my wild library with a homemade insect net [from a discarded gauzy pink curtain, a coat hanger and a broom handle] and field guide in hand at age 13, only to exchange my net for a camera two years later. I went through stages of imitation of nature clichés and great nature photography before I began to notice things I had never seen in pictures and began to be able to photograph them.”
He learned to look at the world differently, to find unique beauty in what might seem like very ordinary scenes.
Simpson has been photographing seriously since 1960, at age 14. He began in 35mm, doing his own black and white darkroom work starting in 1961. His work won contests beginning in high school, when he also had his first publications. While pursuing other careers in academia (he has a Ph. D. in comparative literature and held university teaching positions) and jazz piano and music software (he got a Master of Music degree in 1994), he stayed active in photography.
In the spring of 2002, he began using medium format and a digital darkroom. He showed his images from the Colorado Plateau, the Berkshires, Adirondacks, and other northeastern locales. He exhibited at galleries in Union, N.J. in November, 2002, and in June, 2003 at the Hackensack Meadowlands Environment Center. His upcoming show at the Meadowlands center will include images of New Mexico, featuring petroglyphs and pictographs.
For more information about the show, call (201) 460-1700.