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Ronald A. Lake
For me, photography is a form of insight, which aims to reveal essential facets of the world around us and our experience within it. I prefer to make images that challenge our expectations, present a new perspective, and inspire a sense of fascination.
Largely self-taught, I took up photography as a result of visiting Madagascar in 2007. Because Madagascar was so different than the suburban Connecticut environment I lived in, I thought I had better bring a camera with me, and hastily learned the basics of how to use it. Madagascar made such a deep impression on me that I felt compelled to publish a book of my photos (Glimpses of Madagascar: Lemurs and Landscapes, People and Places). Soon after, the book became a featured selection in the Annual Holiday Book Guide of Outdoor Photography magazine, and my photos were exhibited at various places. The recognition was nice, but the real effect of my “beginner’s luck” was to stoke my appetite for doing more photography - regardless of whether I had an audience or not.
These four images portray segments of the wooded areas along one short stretch of the Connecticut River just north of Essex. The denseness of the forest initially appears tangled, chaotic, full of growth as well as decay. Peering more closely, though, patterns and design become more apparent. And what seems inert is actually changing steadily, if imperceptibly at any one moment. The forest has many moods, some of which are its own, and some of which we imagine.
