Dr. Emery, before starting his own educational business, taught political philosophy and aesthetic theory at major universities. His speciality is advanced theory and the study of the intersection of political power, culture, and markets. For many decades though, whatever his day job might be, his first and consummate passion has been the pursuit of fine art photography. He and his wife spend a total of several months each year traveling across the United States and in more recent years up and down countless times the East Coast all the way from Miami to Bar Harbor in search of deeper photographic images. His work has been shown extensively at many juried exhibitions including by curators from such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC(twice, including a First Prize award), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Phillip’s Collection in D.C. among many others.
Given his extensive knowledge of the political space he has long been dismayed at the extent to which well meaning and often quite talented photographers have readily traded their full pursuit of photography as a way of life for serving, to paraphrase a famous philosopher, as valets to one ideology or another. Whatever the specific politics involved, and some he is even in agreement with, this is a path that has disempowered both the artist and the field as a whole. It is a path encouraged by various institutional, commercial, and political groups to manipulate and control the artists and keep them from fulfilling their true mission of creating a fuller sense of wonder, deeper form, creative individualism, and expressive truth. It also prevents, ultimately, the creation of a genuine cultural and creative space that serves the artists fully on many levels including even paradoxically empowering the field economically.
This site is dedicated to showing a different path or way or “do” to use the Buddhist term sometimes applied to such things as the martial arts, for the photographic artist. To encourage fine art photography to get back on that upward progressive spiritual path once championed by figures like Kandinsky and Mondrian for art as a whole. Not because such a path leads to short term commercial success or crass fame or the adulation for a mere 15 minutes of the flip and superficial, but because it makes possible a deeper identity and meaning and even economic realm that transcends these power machinations. It asks can a new art movement or at least a potential new artist be created that like with some of the earlier Abstract Expressionists restores in this case for photographic art a place considering the most important and profound questions of modern art? This is something which surely requires what was once understood as paramount, an autonomous not politicized space for the field.
This site will discuss what this path might entail and provides a tentative blueprint and crucial ideas for the first time publicly that can be taken up by other artists. It will discuss how this key creative realm has been lost, critique some of the in many cases misguided approaches dominating the field, and how a new fully invigorated photography can be championed. Extensive notes on key concepts of the new Creative Abstract Design style will be fully detailed here. The gallery shares some of the extensive and important work done by the artist including regularly new work completed which will also be further elaborated upon periodically in specific posts.
If interested in the approach be sure to check out the new Kindle book, Creative Abstract Design: Towards A New Modernist Photography for the 21st Century available on Amazon.com.