Chuck Kimmerle
Minnesota native Chuck Kimmerle has worked as a photographer for more than 30 years. He began his career as a newspaper photojournalist at newspapers in Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and North Dakota where he was part of a 4-person photography staff named as one of two finalists for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography. Chuck has since turned his attentions away from frenzy of news and towards the quiet and reticent landscape.
The experiences and tenets of photojournalism heavily influence Chuck’s work. While firmly rooted in the arena of traditional “landscape” photography, his work is both contemporary and introspective. He strives to create images which are unique and unexpected, and which include narratives to encourage dialog between the image and viewer.
Chuck’s work was published in a monograph, “Peripheral Vision,” by Lenswork, and has been included in more than three dozen magazine features in periodicals around the work including in the U.S., New Zealand, Australia, Italy, Great Britain, and the Middle East. His work has been widely exhibited and is in the collections of the North Dakota Museum of Art, the Nicolaysen Art Museum, and the Dahl Fine Arts Center.
He works exclusively in black and white.
Artist’s Statement
For me, photography is about exploration and discovery as much as it is about the final image. While both are hopelessly entangled for the photographer, the viewer, the audience, is privy only to the end result. No matter how great the photograph, how insightful the composition, much is left unshared.
My approach is to try and offer images which are unique and, more importantly, unexpected, while at the same time staying true to photography’s unique abilities and traditions.
I believe strongly in the narrative of the single image. The inherent limitations of a lone image provide a narrative which is less than complete, only a hint at times, thus encourages the viewer to help fill in the blanks and increases their desire to see, without hope, what lies beyond the edges.