Elkhorn in Winter

"Time sprints along with whole weeks moving by in fast forward and yet my concerns, photographically speaking, remain much the same as they have for quite a while, and they seem, curiously, outside of time: the natural world and its blessings and mysteries, the human form and its universal language, the portrait that is given as well as taken (as my friend and teacher James Baker Hall would say), and the messages from the street that remind us not to take the world, or ourselves, too seriously. I'm interested, too, in the unforeseen, and what can be learned from it about loss, longing and desire. I'm interested in the quality of light on a wall. I want to get my eyes around something I can't get my hands on, or don't have words to describe. Some of these pictures I set out to make. Others just grew, organically, out of my everyday life. I love it when that happens. Signs and wonders abound; if we look hard enough and long enough surely we can see them. "
 

Guy Mendes is one of the best-known and well-respected photographers in the region. A suite of 13 of his portraits of writers is in the collection of the Photographic Archives at the University of Louisville, and the Cincinnati Art Museum and the University of Kentucky Art Museum own his prints. Mendes' work encompasses several interests. In addition to landscape and portraiture, he loves to capture the unexpected, in both figures and as found in odd signs and situations. Much of Mendes' work has been widely published in books and magazines and his prints are in many public and private collections. Mendes has also won several Emmy Awards as a documentary writer, director and producer for Kentucky Educational Television, where he has worked since 1973.