It seems like I’ve had a camera in my hand as long as I can remember. I got my first camera, a Kodak 127 Brownie Starmite, when I was 12. I recall wanting to capture the people and places I experienced so I could hold onto those memories, those faces that even then I realized would be gone one day. I hoped to remember always what it was like to be in a particular place at a particular moment. Thinking about the history of photography, this has always been one of its greatest appeals: to preserve our past and the people we loved, especially after they are gone.

Over time, that feeling led me to embrace the New Topographics sensibility: a perception of the human imprint on the Earth as one might have toward the archaeological ruins of a civilization long gone, distant in time, detached in a way, but still feeling the struggles of those who were there before us. There are many images on this website with that sensibility.

As I followed that line of exploration, I discovered, studied, and was strongly influenced by Japanese art, especially the concepts of wabi sabi (the appreciation of the beauty of the impermanent, imperfect, and incomplete -- a complete corollary to the aesthetic of the New Topographics), and ma (emptiness, the space between things, often referred to as negative space in Western art). These things led me to a physical realization of the presence and power of the universal life force (Japanese: ki; Chinese: qi, or ch'i).

Now my evolution has brought me to a place where I want to show what can’t be seen, to create images of the life force in pure form.

I instinctively use light— not as mere illumination of an object, person, landscape, or whatever is in front of the camera— but for the light itself. I believe light is the ki of the stars. I strive for the direct abstract depiction of ki, not just some metaphor for it. Life moves by at blinding speed and passes without remorse, leaving us aching at the ineffable beauty of its transience, imperfection, and incompleteness. I like to think I’m using light like a chisel to create sculptural images—dimensional and yet beyond dimension.

All my work starts with a single-exposure camera capture and I use only simple photographic tools—brightness, contrast, saturation, hue — things I might use digitally, in a darkroom, in processing, or on an enlarger. I don’t use Photoshop or AI.

For the images that are not obviously representational, I sincerely ask the viewer to approach them in the same way as they would contemplate an abstract painting. Although there are sometimes recognizable elements in the images, they are secondary to the overall abstraction. If the observer insists on seeking to identify the pictorial subject of these images, it will only interfere with their being able to see the images' more genuine and deeper meaning. Please just allow the images to speak to you on their own terms.

This approach to photography is not new. As Minor White said, “One should not always photograph things for what they are, but for what else they are.”

Thank you for allowing me to share these works with you.

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This website and all images, text and photographs herein are copyrighted.
Joseph L. Akerman, 2010 - 2026.
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