This illustrated BIO contains only a few highlights from my text based bio and CV on this website and is in reverse chronological order. Photo: Times Square, New York City 2021.
Los Angeles Center for Photography, Exhibition, "Thresholds, Street Photography Now". Photo: After Easter Parade, Fifth Avenue, New York City 2019.
Atlanta Photography Group, Exhibition, The Language of Color. Photo: Manhattan, New York City 2018.
Interview published on UP Photographers website. Photo: Bronx, NY, 2019 Link to interview: https://upphotographers.com/interviews/interview-with-dennis-church/
At the beginning of Covid lockdown I decided that I could comfortably photograph out on the street as I usually had done for decades. I usually don't get close to people doing this, so I felt safe. I resumed a long standing but very poorly and sparingly approached project that I started many years ago: to photograph Florida's Tamiami Trail, US Highway 41 from Tampa to Miami. I lived one mile from the Trail and during Covid and for the last four years I have diligently traveled the road in search of my photographic interpretation. The Trail is the first highway through the massive swampy ecological marvel that we now call The Everglades. And it was one of the first roads to connect Florida's southwest with its' southeast coasts, leading to major developmemts in the state's economy. It's big deal in Florida and has been for a long time. Finished in 1928, the road was an engineering marvel at the time because of the difficulty constructing in The Everglades: machine over nature? Maybe, but we'll see on that question. Photo: Car Wash During Covid, Sarasota, Florida, August 2020.
Continued exploration of color and photographic depiction. I don't like referring to my pictures as work. I sometimes say that my work is this or that, but when I do I feel it's not right. I do not feel it's work making them so I do not feel that the products of my endeavors are work either. Photography is a marvelous phenomena and I feel joyously grateful I can freely practice the medium as I see fit. Photography has given my life purpose and meaning beyond what I could have ever imagined when I bought that camera on a whim almost 50 years ago! Photo: Delray Beach, Florida 2023
Some of my photographs were published in an important book: Bystander, A History of Street Photography. At the time I had not even considered that I was a street photographer. It does not matter really, but the idea helped me put my work in context in my own mind. I might as well say I am a documentary photographer, or a landscape photographer, or whatever. I just know I did not enjoy studio photography. The distinction did help me gain more clarity about my intentions and results. Photo: New York City 2008.
After Lens Culture featured my work, their wide audience distribution led to several other online and in print publications asking to run stories about my photographs. They came from England, Italy, Czech Republic, France, USA, and even Russia! The Russian request was the most fun as I got to see my work against the Russian Cyrillic text. Someone suggested I needed a name for my body of work. I immediately thought of AMERICOLOR. I'm an American photographing America, and I did not want to over think it. It works for me. Here's the Russian link, see for yourself: http://bit.ly/2Fjyo5B
In November 2013 I attended a portfolio review in Paris, sponsored by Foto Fest and Lens Culture. Shortly after that event, Lens Culture chose my work as one of their favorite portfolios for 2013. Photo: Woman in Phone Booth, Merrimac, Wisconsin 2007. http://bit.ly/2qhuIaG
I showed 85 color photographs at The Sidney and Berne Davis Art Center inn Fort Myers, Florida. A one person exhibition, it was the first time I had shown solo in ten years.
Lens/Scratch web site features my work after a workshop I attended. It was an affirmation, a rewarding feeling for my several year's immersion in color exploration. Photo: Flea market displays, Bonita Springs, Florida 2012. http://bit.ly/2tfhEYz
Extensive prolific exploration of color, via digital means. I discover digital photography is a new medium, somehow different than analogue. The way edges are "drawn" by digital cameras seems different, adds a subtle abstraction quality, that flattens the image almost imperceptibly to most viewers, but yet present. I embrace the trait. Photo: 2012-laundromat near my home, Florida's SW coast.
A friend showed me his digital Nikon camera. I immediately bought one just like it. I became immersed in color and over-joyed with it. I had been making and loving black and white images for 30+ years and suddenly I was dramatically awakened into a new world that powerfully changed my consciousness. Photo: Madison, Wisconsin 2006. Color expanded my language. Now I could connect with hues and saturations that I could do with shades of gray and form before. The added complexity upped the excitement ante.
Enjoying my immediate and extended family life, continue to make personal photographs. Photo: Unknown date: Nieces and nephew playing at family reunion.
My father, Charles Raymond Church, died this year. Immersed in grief and the temporality of all things I quit commercial photography to pursue personal assignments as time permitted while I made my living any way I could. Photo: 1983-My father in a resting moment making measurements at the house my parents were moving to after retiring from over 50 years of farming together.
Immersed with my own family and making a living as a freelance photographer, doing studio and location assignments for local, regional and national clients. Continued self assignments and pursued personal vision as contrast to commercial work. Photo: Drugstore Cafeteria, Capital Square, Madison, Wisconsin 1982.
I returned to Madison, Wisconsin. I received a publicly funded art grant to do my proposed project: "A Photographic Survey of the Physical and Social Environment of Downtown Madison", which took a full year. It culminated in my one person exhibit of the work at The Madison Art Center. Photo: June is Dairy Month Event on Madison's Capital Square.
I attend Apeiron Photography Workshops in Millerton, New York. More experimentation and prolific output! It's a workshop so I worked on my vision and craft for a year, making many "field trips" and road trips in New England. Photo: Coney Island 1979.
A period of exploration, experimentation with what a camera can do and how to manage it, control it, while continuing my Iowa documentation. This picture of my maternal grandparents on a Halloween evening: Grandma plays solitaire while grandpa looks on.
I acquired a camera on a whim this year. My first impulse was to photograph my rural Iowa family, home and environs, because I knew it would all disappear. It did! At the time I lived 200 miles away. I am left with this precious record. I have continued to photograph there when I visit to this day 48 years later. Photo: This picture is from my parents wedding anniversary gathering in 1980. My relatives have a great time clowning and being silly. This depicts a mock wedding with cross dressing! I have often thought this is my antidote to the severe visualized shame in Grant Wood's American Gothic.