ED CORNACHIO'S PHOTOMORPHOSIS.
Photomorphosis is a personal journey from the photo-realistic world of my earlier work into a new world of fantasy and exploration.

"I think I'm really a frustrated painter, but without a painter's talent or discipline to create anything meaningful with brush and canvass. Instead, I use my camera and my imagination.

Photomorphosis is a personal journey from the photo-realistic world of my earlier work into a new world of fantasy and exploration. I think I'm really a frustrated painter, but without a painter's talent or discipline to create anything meaningful with brush and canvass. Instead, I use my camera and my imagination.

Sixty-six years ago I made my first photograph with a Foth Derby camera, given to me by my uncle when he returned from Germany at the close of World War II. Since then, I’ve covered a lot of photographic ground, beginning with The Art Center School in Los Angeles, where I was strongly influenced by the likes of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Minor White. Following Art Center, I worked in fashion and advertising, eventually heading the photography department at California Fashion Publications, a consortium of three fashion magazines.

In 1964, when the new Los Angeles County Museum of Art was still under construction, I accepted their offer to inaugurate and head the museum’s photography department. For the next eighteen years I was surrounded on a daily basis by some of the world’s finest art work. On any single day in my photo studio, there were worldly masterpieces (unframed, for photo purposes) casually lying about, lacking the usual reverence accorded them on the museum’s walls. To actually hold in my hands the works of a Van Gogh, Monet, Caravaggio, and scores of others, was an awesome, yet humbling experience. It was also the greatest, single influence for my own personal photographic vision to come, many years later.

Today, my photography is in a state of flux. At the age of eighty, with more than sixty years behind the camera, that may seem a strange thing to say. But the strong and lasting influence of my years at the museum has made me realize that I am really a frustrated painter, but without a painter’s talent or discipline to create anything meaningful with oil and canvas…

… and thus, PHOTOMORPHOSIS — a personal journey, from the photo-realistic world of my earlier work into a newer world of exploration and fantasy. Along the way, I sometimes tip-toe gingerly, making only small modifications to the original image. Other times I charge headlong down uncharted paths, often surprised by what I see beyond the bend." -- Ed Cornachio

View some of Ed's work HERE.





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