Photo by Jerry Ranch
STATEMENT
I was born in the South but raised in the Midwest where I’ve grown to love small towns and rural spaces. I use a camera to find the undecorated, authentic structures, landscapes, and people to create the first lines of a story that the viewer gets to finish.
BIOGRAPHY
As a trained journalist, writer, graphic designer, and marketer, I have always tried to understand a subject’s essence, document it, and communicate it to others in a way that engages, challenges or informs. I’ve worked with acrylics on canvas and built assemblages with found objects. Only through the lens of a camera, however, am I able to represent the primary subject accurately, so that I can focus on telling a compelling story, starting with an implied “Once upon a time…”.
While I can be found photographing the streets of Des Moines, I’m more naturally drawn to rural spaces and the people, architecture, institutions, and landscapes that represent the past, present, and future of the heartland. I work in color and black and white, equally at home capturing the breadth of the landscape or an abstract slice of it. Whether people, animals or structures, much of my work features a simple, graphic composition that isolates the subject in its larger, contextual environment. Other images are intimately cropped to draw the viewer into the subject’s world or create an abstract perspective.
CONTACT
If you’d like to talk about photography or art, or commission a project, please contact Mark at 515.822.3706 or email marktruephoto@gmail.com.