Frank Mercado

My idea of fine art photography was formed by the works of the 20th century Modernist masters. Two photographers of that era, Aaron Siskind and Minor White, particularly inform my work because like them I too am interested in investigating how photography, with its compositional powers of focus, framing, tonality control, and compression, can create an abstract image of formal beauty.

Minor White once instructed his students to photograph objects “not only for what they are, but for what else they are.” It is in that spirit that my primary work in photography has taken. I look for formal beauty in the ordinary objects and scenes all around us, searching for a striking image that may be hiding in plain sight, locked within and camouflaged by an ordinary or even ugly context. Generally working with a telephoto lens, I get close to my subject as I endeavor to record details unseen by casual human vision, capture shades and colors unnoticed by the eye, block out distracting context, and reveal patterns, forms, and shapes that may be apparent only when three dimensions are compressed into two.

— Frank Mercado

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