Av Gordon
Av Gordon has been actively photographing for more than four decades, initially focusing on the Southwest, Northern California and aviation venues. He received his law degree from the University of Minnesota and retired from law at the end of 2015. The subject of his photography has evolved from almost landscape images to other subjects, including people of Europe and Cuba, historic relics and the deteriorating instruments of war. He has been active with the Minneapolis Photo Center where he participated in various group exhibits and calls for entry, including 2015 Still Life—The Inanimate, and has participated in juried exhibits sponsored by other private and public groups.
Artist’s Statement
In the mid to late 1980s I was privileged to find inspiration for my landscape photography from two outstanding artists, Bruce Barnbaum and the late Ray McSavaney. From them I learned to not only how to improve my craft, but the ability to see and express the emotion and texture of landscapes, and in the case of both of these artists, the beauty in the old and sometimes forgotten man-made things. Those were my days of backpacking with film, 4×5 cameras, lenses and holders in sometimes in hostile terrain, followed by endless hours in the darkroom. But things changed at the dawn of the 21st Century and so did my methods of creating images. I fully adopted digital photography and printing. I began to travel and photograph people and places of this country and in the old world with digital cameras and twenty-five pounds less weight on my back. At the same time there was a merger of my interest in historical aviation and the relics of our destructive tools from World War Two and the Vietnam era. Despite their ultimate intended use—to cause death—these machines, when looked at in their resting places in bone yards and museums, with reflected light on their engineered structures, have an abstract and surreal quality that draws my interest and, I hope, the interest of those who view the images.