Steve Nieslony

Artist Statement

“One of the most important decisions a photographer must make is, what type of film you load into the camera.”
- Jay Dusard, Guggenheim Fellowship 1981

When Jay made this statement to me in the fall of 1997 (before the digital revolution) – it highlighted to me that the idea of Intent goes beyond subject matter and includes the focus on how you wish the subject to be seen or presented. For the next several years I exclusively photographed in black and white using film in my medium format and large format cameras.

With the digital revolution – options emerged – one can make color and black and white images using a simple trick in Photoshop. This created the inevitable question – do you prefer this photo more in color or in black and white? While exploring these options was exciting – I felt that I had begun to lose the Intent I experienced when I fully focused on black and white.

A few years back, a niche camera system using monochrome sensors was introduced and simultaneously, I found a book by Gerry Johannson titled “American Winter”. This monograph was a collection of black and white images of mid-western states, shot with a fixed lens Rolleiflex TLR over a couple of 3-week trips to the region. One camera, one focal length, black and white all in a fixed period of time.

This set in motion the idea of shooting with a Leica Q2 Monochrome (fixed 28mm lens with full frame black and white sensor) camera and setting a time frame of 25 months from start to finish. This is the genesis of these images and many more along with the the desire to Reveal them as part of a show at Viewpoint Photographic Art Center.