©Wayne Swanson, From the Workshop

A number of years ago, a tall, quietly intelligent artist entered my classroom, driving to Los Angeles from San Diego each week to understand the photographer’s journey. Our journey together lasted several years and then I watched Wayne Swanson and his photographs take flight in remarkable ways. Wayne passed away this week, after a long and challenging illness. He will be so missed by his loved ones and the Los Angeles and San Diego photo communities. I am sharing a previous post on his work, a tender and artful look at his father’s legacy as a woodworker, sharing the details of his craftsmanship, his writings, and the furniture he created. Wayne will be sorely missed and I feel such gratitude to have known him.

©Wayne Swanson, From the Workshop

From the Workshop

From the Workshop is a celebration of family, craftsmanship, and the urge to create. My father was a mechanical engineer by profession, but woodworking was his passion. He was most content in his workshop (a.k.a. the garage of our family home), surrounded by his tools and piles of assorted soft- and hardwoods. Each new project was an invitation to explore styles, materials, and woodworking techniques to create something that was uniquely his own.

The furniture he made filled the home I grew up in — and now my home and the homes of my siblings. We always admired his skill, but only recently did we come to understand the depth of his passion. That’s when we discovered, buried deep inside a storage locker, the meticulous notes, sketches, detailed plans, and even receipts for materials that he kept for his creations. And there were boxes and boxes of the tools to build them, so many tools.

The images in this series honor the creativity and dedication of the craftsman.

©Wayne Swanson, From the Workshop

Photographer Wayne Swanson created a visual love letter of sorts to his father and his father’s craft of furniture design and making, with his project, From the Workshop. In fact, the approach to Wayne’s photographs and the stories they tell are as unique as the furniture they celebrate. This series sits in the realm of memory and family; in some ways, they are maps that define and investigate a father’s passion, the depth of which was only recently discovered.

Wayne Swanson was a photographer living in San Diego. Born and raised in Chicago, he still kept to his Midwestern sensibility. He was a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. His career included writing and photography for newspapers, magazines, book publishers, and corporate clients.

He began focusing on fine art and documentary photography and his recent work was featured in Shots, The Hand, and Light Leaked magazines, exhibitions at Dab Art and PhotoPlace galleries, and on Aint-Bad.com. He was drawn to images with a sense of place, atmosphere, time, memory, and a subtle sense of humor.

©Wayne Swanson, From the Workshop

©Wayne Swanson, From the Workshop

©Wayne Swanson, From the Workshop

©Wayne Swanson, From the Workshop

©Wayne Swanson, From the Workshop

©Wayne Swanson, From the Workshop

©Wayne Swanson, From the Workshop

©Wayne Swanson, From the Workshop

©Wayne Swanson, From the Workshop

©Wayne Swanson, From the Workshop

©Wayne Swanson, From the Workshop

©Wayne Swanson, From the Workshop