Len Emery

Len Emery

Down East Journal, The Fishermen of Washington County Maine

2023

archival pigment print, 89 pages, stab bound book

11.5 x 8 in

$350

Len Emery

American, based in Springfield, Vermont

Artist’s Statement

taken from Down East Journal, The Fishermen of Washington County Maine, 2022 archival pigment print, 89 page, stab bound book.

I am a photographer, electrical engineer, photojournalist and pilot. I am currently living in Springfield, Vermont having moved here in 2003 From Connecticut. I have also been a radar technician, a millwright, a limousine driver and a sausage packer but always with a camera in hand.

I purchased my first good camera, a Topcon Super-D in 1969 in Vietnam with the idea of doing some reportage when it crossed my path. I hid the photos and negatives that I took of the incredible amount of government waste in some speakers and sent them back to the U.S. The photos were promptly confiscated and so are lost to history. I used Super-D for nearly twenty years until it could no longer be repaired. I purchased a new autofocus film camera from Canon but it never seemed to measure up to my old Super-D.

In 1993, I bought a house in West Haven, Connecticut and built a darkroom in a converted third floor apartment. Soon thereafter, I populated it with some rather ragged equipment and started shooting again on a more frequent basis. I went digital in 2003 and never really looked back. I now have a studio in Springfield, Vermont where I do my own digital printing. I have abandoned the wet darkroom in favor of digital printing. I use several different kinds of software to produce and print my work.

In 2004 I picked up my camera, got in a rented airplane and started to pursue arial photography as a business on a part time basis. After my so called retirement in 2008 I became a full time fine art and arial photographer. Several years ago a Vermont newspaper asked me to work for them as a freelance photojournalist. I worked for the Rutland Herald for four years and enjoyed every minute of it. Working for a newspaper was really what I wanted to do back in 1971 when I was discharges from the Army.

Biography

Len Emery, based in Springfield, Vermont an aerial, photojournalism, and fine art photographer, left the engineering and information systems world to become a full time photographer. Having carried a camera since Vietnam in 1969, Emery learned to fly in 1996, and at the same time built a darkroom. While the artist continues his darkroom practice on a small, environmentally friendly scale, Emery has fully embraced the digital technology available for photography. Now Emery has a studio workstation in his digital darkroom to produce and print all of his work. Emery’s first work with photojournalism during military service in Vietnam involved recording the enormous amount of waste created as seen in the piles of trash, debris, damaged machines, and destroyed land. The negatives and prints were confiscated upon his return to the United States. Later work as a freelance photographer for a Rutland Herald furthered the artist’s passion for showing the lives of people and recording the history of places. Emery’s current work focuses on an 89 page, stab bound, 11.5 x 8 inch, archival pigment printed photo essay, made in the Artist’s studio five books at a time, called Down East Journal, The Fishermen of Washington County Maine. Emery’s second published book is Vermont From One Thousand Feet an Aerial Photo Essay Volume 1: Orange, Windsor and Windham County, 2022, 80 pages. There are four more volumes to follow encompassing the remaining counties in Vermont.  

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