Bio – John Dean
I have both a BFA in art photography / art history, from the University of Arizona in Tucson and an MFA in art photography from Tyler School of Art of Temple University in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. I studied photography with the internationally recognized artists, Todd Walker, William Larson, Harold Jones, Martha Madigan, Esther Parada, and Larry Fink. Two of these artists Todd Walker and Esther Parada were among the very first well known art photographers to fully embrace the transition to digital imagery, long before it was practical and supported commercially the way it is today.
All of my work describes the contemporary landscape in one form or another. For me, picturing the man-made landscape simply refers to looking at the dynamic condition of how we shape the contours and symbols of the terrain that we've inherited. It also reflects how the powers of the natural world and global change affect our ability to reframe that landscape in our own image. Whether these photographs are taken in the real world or the still-life world, or a combination of two, my interests are more subconscious than literal descriptions. What we build is delicate, temporary, mysterious, and vulnerable in the face of greater forces at work behind the sculpted facade.
As the entire world becomes more tightly interdependent, in regard resources exploited, climate linked, and information shared, the demarcations between the personal, the public, and the"natural" space begin to narrow and blur. In the end, it becomes one seamless planet with one shared history. The monuments and markers we build today are as ephemeral as the shifting weather that will ultimately shape the fleeting memory of them.
