Seattle photographer, Douglas Ethridge, continues to explore the world and the photographic medium with artistic focus and technical dexterity. Many of his projects have unique approaches, each appropriate to the subject matter. For all of my adult life I have been in the story-telling business, using various combinations of music, words and imagery. I find myself interested in and curious about virtually everything that crosses my path. Most of my artistic efforts are driven by a response to a location, to a moment, to some vague notion. Like a carpenter, I suppose, I enjoy the challenge of selecting the right tool for the job at hand.

Doug’s new series, Waypoints, will be celebrated in an exhibition at the Camerawork Gallery in Portland, Oregon from January 29-February 25. The project is the result of finding another perfect tool and way of seeing. When I attended Photolucida in 2009, I experienced a number of these prints in person and can attest to his skills as a photographer and printer–they are luminescent.

Waypoints: I began this body of work in late 2008. Initially, I was curious about combining ideas of memory and childhood explorations of the coast with a more basic desire to hit the road and see what there was to see. Along the way, the images hijacked the intellectual process and returned me to where I almost always end up no matter where I think I’m going.

The reality as I approach my 60th year on this planet is that at the end of the day, my creative instincts are rooted in jazz music and street photography, responding and reacting in the moment at a very fundamental gut level to what is placed in front of me. I’m fascinated with the ability of the camera to capture scenes in ways that the unaided eye simply cannot see and not really interested in making up some sort of intellectual justification or explanation of the images I make.

They illustrate the way I see a particular slice of the world at any given moment in time. Nothing more, nothing less. These WAYPOINTS serve as markers on my journey, moments encountered and recorded, technique evolving, images riffing on each other, always leading me down intersecting paths towards new possibilities.