Mark Citret
(AMERICAN, b. 1949)
Mark Citret has always been intrigued by the everyday wonders of the visual world. The sense of expansive awareness that for Citret is a prerequisite to photography enables him to capture the small everyday flashes of insight that come when we are open to them and often go before we can fully grasp or appreciate them. Sights that most of us tend not to notice—a weathered phone book, an empty bulletin board, a twisted chain link fence—seem full of meaning, made spectacular and somehow poignant through his eye. Citret’s images are a sort of meditation in seeing; though they rarely contain human forms, they are powerful testaments to the relationship between human presence and transitory nature. Fascinated from his earliest work with the delicate nuances possible in black and white, his work with vellum paper allows him to convey the ideas of softer ranges in his work. Luminous and warm, the vellums heighten the sense of everyday epiphany found in his images.
“I am touched by the reverence with which Mark’s eyes approach the world before him, the tenderness with which he sees subtle simple beauty that is nearly invisible to, and most often ignored by, passersby. He discovers almost hidden secrets, things that existed at a particular moment, fleetingly and only for him. The meaning too was apparent only for him and the intensity of his feeling. Few ever observe and make such minute and meaningful connections between light and ever so transitory revelations. Mark Citret walks lightly over this earth but sees so much. ”