Kevin Franke

Bio / Resume / Statement

Born in Minnesota, late '49. Started drawing shortly thereafter and soon preferred it to most other activities. Went to school; Art was my best subject. Was a pretty O.K. all around student but also a daydreamer who found school mostly boring. Always liked the pictures more than the reading. Had a full sized studio easel in my bedroom.

Went on to the mega-University of Minnesota but was too distracted by "the Sixties" to pay much attention (except Art classes). Dropped out and landed in Art School. The Minneapolis College of Art and Design was a much better fit; I did well and earned my BFA degree in Painting and Photography in 1974. Then, in '75, I went to the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York for a couple of years to study photography even further.

Got my first camera in 1970 or '71 but mostly just toyed around with it. Then in '72, I moved to London, England, for a year, to study painting. Met a photographer there named John Benton-Harris who loved shooting photographs, and showed me, by example, how exciting and how much fun it could be. He told me that film was like scratch paper; I started buying it in 100 foot rolls and loading my own cassettes, and came back to Minnesota a photographer. There, at MCAD, I studied with Tom Arndt, who stood up for the integrity of Photography as a Fine Art (still an issue in the early 70's for some, but not a hard sell for me). And then, on to the Workshop, where Nathan Lyons taught me (among other things) about how pictures can relate to each other as a body of work, in a suite, or as a sequence, and how they can transcend the prosaic, transcend narrative and even description, to become something more akin to poetry.

Photography was my obsession throughout the second half of the '70's, until I moved to New York City in the beginning of 1980. My plan was to support myself as a photographer (I've never had any interest in commercial work) by making and selling paintings (really). I did make and sell some paintings, and in the process, became a painter again. I never got around to building a darkroom (I still have thirty-some rolls of exposed but undeveloped film from late '79 in a drawer somewhere), and my photographic output was relegated to family and vacation snapshots, and occasional working studies for my paintings. It would be another twenty years before I again took up photography as my primary picture making medium.

Meanwhile, the painting was going pretty well. Throughout the 80's and into the mid-90's I had eight one-person shows in Manhattan, five at O.K. Harris Gallery (1982, '83, '85, '89, and '95), plus a couple of other solos in other places including a museum show at the Butler Institute of American Art, in Youngstown Ohio, in 1991.

I was also included in a number of group shows during this time, around the region and beyond; Florida, California, Illinois, Kentucky, Arizona, even one in Japan. All in all, it is not a huge list. I was never really a part of the 80's scene, preferring to spend the wee hours in my studio rather than in the nightclubs. I created a body of work that I am proud of, but my painting started to run it's course in the late '90's. I was losing interest, losing the energy and the fun and needed to be reinvigorated, and eventually re-engaged with photography.

I am, by definition, a street photographer, though I'm not sure what that might mean to anybody. I've always thought that if visual expression has it's roots in original visual experience, then what could be more elemental than simply going out for a walk with a camera in your hand to see what you can see (and hopefully, capture)? I don't have a subject matter; my photography is about discovery, not invention. Sometimes, when I go out photographing, I find myself standing for a long while in front of my door, frozen in indecision over whether to turn left or right. And while the images I find are documentary in the sense that they are unadulterated descriptions of actual people, places and events, they have little to do with reportage, journalism or sociology. They are visual, not narrative in the usual sense. I have no interest (and probably scant qualifications) in explaining the world to anyone.

Maybe all that it's really about is what it's like to be a photographer, if you're me. Or, maybe I'm not really a photographer at all, but just a painter gone slightly mad with a camera. As much as I love and respect good photojournalism, for me, an originally seen and beautifully described picture of something ordinary or even mundane is more meaningful than a simply adequate or utilitarian description of some profound event or reality. It's all real life after all, even just a day to day city street with apparently nothing happening at all. In the end, it's not about photographing something. It's about seeing something.

I started this website in February, 2009, with the intention of having a place to show my work in photography to anyone who's interested in looking, in my own time and on my own terms. Unlike an advertisement however, or an indicator of the real work which actually exists somewhere else, I chose to treat the site as a legitimate format in it's own right (irregardless that the image quality is necessarily degraded). I started it with just over 150 photographs in seven separate sequences grouped together like a collection of poems, or an album of songs, and will add to it from time to time. When I do so, I will keep the previous postings available in an "archive". Like most artists, I define my own game and make my own rules. I use some photos multiple times if they are indispensable or even just make sense in different contexts. I will go back and pull stuff out of earlier work, or re-edit work that has already been posted if my ideas change or new pictures become available. Everything is changeable, everything is a work in progress. But the one thing that will likely not change (much) is my working method, my philosophy, or my interests. I've always thought that honest, candid photographs of the world around us, sometimes rigorously formal, sometimes disconcertingly casual, sometimes seemingly without discernible narrative or content, but always true, is photography at it's best.

Thank You.