| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | Gordon Dinwoodie has been engaged in photography since his parents gave him a hand-me down Box Brownie camera as a child. Despite the growing popularity of digital technology, he continues to work largely with film and traditional printing techniques to create images that explore natural and built environments, and the social and spiritual aspects embedded in them. Many of his images are made with large format equipment; however, he also works with medium format when something more portable is called for. He prints in a traditional darkroom, which provides a place to retreat from an increasingly busy world and allows time for the creative process.
Dinwoodie works almost exclusively with traditional silver-based black and white materials, as he feels monochrome focuses the viewer on the elements of a scene by simplifying the image and reducing it to the essentials of form and composition. These monochrome processes provide a stripped-down image, emphasizing textures and light in a way that suggests the larger reality behind the material subject of the photograph, and minimize distractions that interfere with the emotional content of the image.
Since 2006, he has exhibited regularly in Edmonton and around Alberta, including in the annual juried show with The Monochrome Guild, an Edmonton collective of photographers who enjoy working with cameras that still require film and who promote interest in traditional monochrome photographic methods and processes. In 2012, Dinwoodie received Honourable Mention at the Open Photo exhibition sponsored by Visual Arts Alberta. His work is held in the collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, as well as numerous private collections.
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