Tom Chambers – Improbable Dreams
Through photo montage I present unspoken stories which illustrate fleeting moments in time and which are intended to evoke a mood in the viewer. These mythical illustrations might address the fragility of childhood or the delicate transition experienced by a child passing into adolescence and then adulthood. Others express the tension in the uncertain coexistence between man and his environment, a delicate balance too often ignored and damaged. Each photo montage is carefully constructed, using both images that have been planned and those that unexpectedly enhance the story. With digital photography I desire to move beyond documentation of the present, and rather seek to fuse reality and fantasy in musing about possibilities of the future.
To create a photo montage I photograph each piece of the final image using a Nikon digital camera or a medium format film camera. The processed film is scanned at a high resolution, approximately 80 megabytes per frame. Then, I use Photoshop software with a Macintosh computer to combine the pieces, thus creating the final image. Lastly, this final image is printed with archival pigment inks on cotton rag paper.
Tom Chambers was raised in the Amish country of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Following life altering experiences of military service during the Vietnam War and travel throughout the United States, Mexico, and Canada, Tom completed a B.F.A. in 1985 from Ringling School of Art with an emphasis in graphic design and photography. Since 1998 Tom has devoted himself to photo montage for sharing intriguing unspoken stories about spirituality, personal identity, and co-existence.
Currently, Tom is represented by seven galleries in the United States and Spain. His work has been shown nationally and internationally in Spain and Colombia, as well as in a wide range of print and online publications. Tom has received recognition for his photo montages through a variety of awards, as well as fellowships from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Virginia Commission for the Arts.
http://www.tomchambersphoto.com/
