5 W. York St. Savannah, GA 31401 (912) 239-9977 or goldeneyegallery@yahoo.com

CarlKotheimer

My first “serious” camera was a time-weathered 2 ¼ twin lens Rollie my father handed down to me when I was 15 years old. It wasn’t long before I had taken over the “fruit cellar” in the basement of our home for my first darkroom. I didn’t have an enlarger yet, so I contact-printed the 2 ¼ negatives there among the jars of strawberry preserves and stewed tomatoes. I shot with the Rollie through high school and into college, where I re-discovered 35mm. I bought a second-hand Exacta with no light meter, so I continued using my old hand held meter from the Rollie years. I learned about exposure, mostly by making every mistake in and out of the book.

Like many in my photographic generation, I grew up admiring the work of Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray (who had me making my first photograms) and, of course, Ansel Adams. I was awestruck by Adams’ work and hoped some day to make photographs and prints that approached his level of technical quality and creative insight. I wanted to learn as much as possible from his own words, so I totally immersed myself in his trilogy, The Camera, The Negative and The Print, which became my classroom. After completing a series of zone system measurements and tests, I began shooting with the Hasselblad, which I used throughout the 80’s and 90’s for most of my black and white work. The distillation of my work during that period was featured in an exhibit called Shadows Distinct in New York City in 2001.

After 35 years of chemical darkroom work, I began transitioning to “the digital darkroom” in the late 90’s, and began working exclusively with digital in 2000. The color work represented here at Goldeneye Gallery has allowed me to expand beyond the “line, shape and shadow” emphasis of the black and white work to more painterly representations of my subjects. However, the cones, triangles, boxes, curves and perpendicular lines of my earlier work are still in evidence as the basic structures of the compositions.

The culmination of my life’s photographic passion is represented here at Goldeneye in limited edition giclee prints created, printed and framed by me. I hope my pictures bring you a large measure of the enjoyment I had in creating them.

Welcome to Goldeneye Gallery!