Robert Turner

Biographical Information

Robert Turner has been working professionally with a camera for more than twenty years. Before turning to images of the natural world he worked in film. As president of Spectrum Films, Inc. he shot on locations from the high Andes of Peru to the streets of Manhattan . He and his partners wrote and directed more than sixty non-fiction films. Their productions were honored with forty-six national and international film festival awards.

Bob now devotes all of his energies to large format, fine art, wildlands photography, logging over 40,000 miles a year in pursuit of the light on the land. He has quickly gained recognition in the art photography scene. His work, which will be featured in a number of solo shows in the upcoming year, hangs in numerous private and corporate collections, including those of SprintPCS, A G Edwards, Goldman Sachs, and Deloitte & Touche. His prints are identified by their strong composition, rich use of color, and sense of depth. They are sold in galleries in New York , Denver , Santa Fe , Yosemite National Park , and Newport Beach , California .

Bob grew up steeped in the natural history of the forests of northern New Jersey and the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York . A longtime member of the Audubon society, he is an avid birder and conservationist. He studied anthropology and fine art at the University of Colorado . After college he lived and worked in highland Peru for several years. When not traveling the back roads of the country he lives with his wife in Carlsbad , California .

Artist's Statement

In my photography I strive to create works of enduring beauty---images that will inform the soul and convey my deep belief in the value of wild places.

In the doing, the struggle is to distill the everywhere-you-look splendor of a place like the Utah canyonlands, or Yosemite Valley , or the North Coast redwoods into an essence which fits within the confines of a rectangle. When it works, it is often because I've managed to capture a fleeting moment of light, color, motion, or stillness that gives the image a sense of heightened reality. I'm left feeling that I have witnessed something that has transcended the realm of ordinary experience. When it is the sun shafting through a storm ten miles out over a canyon, then the moment can be grand, the mood one of awe. When the camera isolates a quiet coming together of nearby shapes and textures then the feeling may be one of profound serenity.

As I travel, I seek out forms and contours in nature which will give graphic structure to my pictures. In the broad views there is often a palpable foreground that yields to lines curving back---rivers, coastlines, canyons---to pull in the distant landscape. In the closer views it is more likely to be a matter of layers, or diagonals, or elements which work across the plane. I am happy when the result creates depth and dimensionality.

In the search for images I am also drawn inexorably to color, especially when it is reinforced by atmosphere---mist, rain, storm clouds, the afterglow of sunset. They work together, like the interplay of harmony and melody in music, to create moods.

Ultimately, I am satisfied that my work is successful when the viewer is struck by a sense of place. It may be a very specific connection to the landscape. But it may also be a sudden wave of nostalgia, or a longing to get back out on the land. It is successful when it serves as a tangible reminder in the everyday urban world of the intangible meaning to be found in the natural world outside our own creation.

About the Prints

All prints are made from 4” x 5” Fujichrome Velvia transparencies, a classic slow speed, high resolution “slide” film. These are exposed with a single camera, a Toyo 4x5 field camera, and a set of 4 lenses by Rodenstock and Schneider. No filters are used. When everything is optimized, this large-format medium is capable of capturing exceptional shading and detail.

Robert Turner Galley