Mitch Dobrowner grew up in Bethpage on Long Island, NY. Worried about his son's lack of direction, his father got him an old Argus rangefinder camera to "fool around with."
Dobrowner was hooked. He found the images of Ansel Adams and Minor White to be mesmerizing. He quit his job, left home and moved to the Southwest to be near the landscapes that he found so dear. But life got in the way for a while, after he married and had three children. He and his wife set up a design studio and he stopped taking pictures.
Twenty years later, inspired by his wife and kids, he picked up the camera again and began photographing his Southwest surroundings.
The artist describes his subject and his response to it this way: "The Earth is an ever changing eco-system. It's existed well before we were here and will hopefully be here well beyond the time we leave it. It's real, at times beautifully surreal, powerfully haunting and alive, all at the same time."
"While photographing, the world gets quiet around me. Things seem simple again, and I obtain a respect and reverence for the world that is hard to communicate through words. I get into a 'zone' where time and space seem hard for me to measure. For me those moments are a combination of the exterior environment and my own interior state. Hopefully the images presented help communicate what I visualize during those times."
All of the images presented have been captured on a combination of either 35mm black & white film and/or digitally. Most of Dobrowner's current work is now digital. All darkroom work is performed in a dry darkroom with minimal dodging and burning. Prints are produced on 100% archival cotton rag paper with archival pigment inks.
Dobrowner has won numerous awards over the last few years, including the latest, a first prize in the Nature category for his B&W photo entry, "Rainstorm" from the French Prix de la Photographie Paris (Px3) Competition. His work has also been recently featured in Black & White magazine and Lenswork.
