Art history often inspires my work. The still lifes from the series Vanitas are descendants of Dutch painting, with a personal twist. I am a film-based, darkroom-based photographer, best known for alternative-process prints, but I have also recently fallen in love with SX-70 Polaroid.

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Bits and pieces of the places I have seen suggest an imagined place that emerges.

I am struck aesthetically by patterns, by shear division of space; and I strive for a balance between whimsy and structure.

This series combines partial photographic images with acrylic on canvas. Man-made and nature-made elements intertwined.

I got hooked on fine art photography, the first night I spent in the darkroom printing my first black and white image.  It was like falling down a rabbit hole. There I was in Wonderland.

Photography is a medium that allows an artist nearly unlimited ways to express herself. I treasure the fact that I can make all kinds of images, many taken right from my imagination. The list includes blurry out-of-focus “street” images, staged doll scenarios, mysterious night shots, quiet observations of everyday life, digital composites and most recently, dreamy encaustic images. My work has evolved from the darkroom, to the computer and recently back to hands on play with alternative processes. Photography, for me, almost always involves an exploration, a journey on which I continue to explore my imagination and ideas. My most recent work is inspired by the magic and lore of fairy tales, the timeless stories that continue to fascinate.

Since 1988 the Federal Government through its Base Realignment and Closure program (BRAC) closed 22 of California

In my photography I try to find a way of seeing that cuts to the essential core of the subject, be it a solitary tree, a crowded sidewalk or a simple portrait.

Visitors from the Past

Found Photographs from the Late 19th Century

For a brief span of only a few decades, from the late 1860's to the dawn of the twentieth century, ordinary people were photographed in a way that often yielded extraordinary results.

The durable, card-mounted albumen photo prints that were so popular during this period can still be found in antique shops. The larger size prints (usually 6.5" x 4.5") were known as "cabinet card" photographs and were often mailed to relatives for display in their homes. To fully appreciate the magic of this, you have to take yourself back to those days and imagine the wonder and excitement of seeing a photograph of a loved one for the first time! 

Unlike modern photographs where the moment of exposure is nearly instantaneous, these images were recorded on glass plate negatives that required long exposure times, sometimes as long as five minutes. Compared with sitting for a painted portrait, this may not have seemed like such a long time, but it still required that the subject find a facial expression that could be held comfortably for the duration of the exposure. 

In the best of these photographs, this requirement helped to create natural, truthful portraits that have an uncanny feeling of presence. These long exposure times captured a succession of moments — almost like a short video — during which the person remained still, but also very alive and present. 

There is something in these pictures that is not found in later photographs. They capture light, but they also capture presence. This is a distinct subjective feature, and it gives these portraits their striking combination of immediacy and timelessness.

If the subject maintained good eye contact with the camera during the exposure, the resulting photograph would then convey the impression that he or she was actually looking out into the room from the cabinet card print when it was put up for display! The presence of the individuals in these pictures is not diminished by time. Even though we now have almost no information about who they were, we can still feel who they were. 

This means that we can feel their qualities of character. This feeling can grow over time, and perhaps even tell us something about the wisdom of their day. As members of the human family, we are all related to the people in these pictures — they are all our "relatives."

In spite of their durability, most cabinet card photos have suffered significant deterioration over the past hundred years. Painstaking digital restoration is very much like cleaning a window. It gives us a clear view into the past, undiminished by spots, scratches, fading and discoloration. Given the nature of the original process, these photographs often contain rich detail, which allows the making of large life-size prints.

This would not be possible without high-resolution digital scanning and today's image editing software tools. These finished pieces thus represent an unusual bridge across time that is anchored at each end by very different, but uniquely complementary, possibilities.

SFHQ offers an exciting selection of artwork celebrating America's Favorite City by San Francisco artist, Stephen C. Wagner. Whimsy and humor abound throughout Fog City in the SFarOut series of digital prints. The essence of San Francisco cool-hunters is captured in the SF Hip digital prints on kraft paper. Color explodes all over San Francisco in the SFab series of screen-prints on vintage wallpaper. Close-ups of San Francisco street signs, cable cars, and tracks highlight the SFocus series of sepia-tone photographs.

BIOGRAPHY Stephen C. Wagner has studied art since the age of six, including workshops at the Witte Museum, Trinity University, and private study, all in San Antonio, TX. During his early years, Stephen showed his works in many venues, including juried shows, art fairs, coffeehouses, and galleries. He obtained his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Arlington in painting and graphic communication. Stephen has exhibited and sold his artwork in galleries in London, Chicago, Dallas, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Laguna Beach, San Diego, Seattle, New Orleans, Palm Springs, and Kauai. His artwork is included in the permanent collections of the Riverside Art Museum and the Museum of the Living Artist, and in the corporate collections of Johnson & Johnson and Kaiser Permanente. His artwork has been featured in the film "Antwone Fisher" directed by Denzel Washington, and was featured on the set of the Bravo TV show "Boy Meets Boy."