Kevin’s Story
British by birth, he attended Stowe School in England and then Merton College, Oxford University (with an MA in Modern History & Economics). From 1981 on, during his ‘career’ years as a British solicitor and an American attorney, he lived in Atlanta, Georgia. He studied for an MBA and was a Woodruff Fellow at the Goizueta Business School, Emory University, Atlanta. In 1985, he started his own law firm and advised on business and commercial real estate matters through 2001. With a significant career change in 2001, his photography moved to the forefront. And several successful exhibits followed. His return to Europe, first France and then Portugal, coincided with the fast evolving world of digital.
Kevin has taken photographs from a very early age, starting with a Brownie 127 camera at age nine. Until 2001, these were always color images, but after joining a Black & White darkroom course at The Showcase School in Atlanta, he discovered his love of that medium and particularly his love of printing Gelatin Silver prints. That love of printing, and its meditative environment, propelled and changed his photography and is now apparent in his digital photgraphy and return to colour images.
Kevin has always been involved in his community. While in Atlanta, he served on the Boards of the Atlanta Opera, The American Friends of Stowe, The Merton College Charitable Corporation, The Atlanta Center for Contemporary Art (f/k/a Nexus), and the Midtown Assistance Center, an organization providing assistance to the working poor for prevention of homelessness in Atlanta. In 1988 he was co-founder of the Atlanta International Museum of Art & Design (now known as “The Museum of Design”) and was President and Chairman from 1988-1993.
In France, while starting and running a hospitality business, he helped found FestiVillars in the northern Dordogne, presenting a series of four concerts each year (which still continue) in classical locations in the small village of Villars. in Portugal, his photographs are now mainly found in print and social media, and while continuing in hospitality with locations in the Algarve, his not-for-profit interest turning to helping those in need in his Algarve community through Somos Esperança Olhão.
The Process
The Silver Gelatin printing process was made famous by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. This printing process produces beautiful, rich prints made from bright luminous whites, deep blacks, and a full compliment of tones in between – the traditional, classic black and white print.
This process has remained largely unchanged since it was introduced in the 1880s. The fiber paper is coated with gelatin that holds light-sensitive silver particles. The image consists of silver compounds suspended in the gelatin-based emulsion. The image from a negative is projected onto the paper, exposing the silver particles to varying degrees of light. The paper is then placed in a chemical developing solution where the exposed silver particles are transformed into tones of gray corresponding to the amount of light received by each particle. The wide spectrum of gray tones produced ranges from full black to full white and creates what is called the “black and white” print. With correct processing on fiber-based paper the result is a museum-quality photograph that will last for centuries.