Although I first learned the basics of photography at my father's newspaper when I was eight years old, my earliest serious photographic efforts started ten years later and were very much influenced by my discovery of The Family of Man. I was very moved by the power of the documentary photograph produced by a skilled and astute observer. At age eighteen I decided photography was the path I wanted to follow for my life's work.

Throughout my fifty years of making both professional and personal photographs, I have explored several parallel paths, including landscape, wildlife and abstract images but I have always photographed life going on around me in the documentary/journalistic tradition.

One of the parallel paths my photographic effort has followed is street photography. In fact, my very first serious photographs were made on the streets of Paris in 1957. I cannot say that I go out looking for anything in particular -- I just go looking. It is like hunting without knowing what you are hunting for but I am always at a high state of alert. I feel that this is where photography is unique. No other medium can capture a single moment in time. Recently, I returned to Paris for the first time in many years and walked the streets looking. I found that after 40 years of making images the hunt is still exciting.

Beginning in 1967 and continuing for about 15 years, I did a great deal of wildlife photography throughout the western United States. Many of these images were made under very challenging conditions, i.e., low light and bad weather. Some are very difficult to print on conventional gelatin silver materials and were printed in very small numbers. In many cases, only two or three silver prints exist.

The role of the photographer as printmaker excites me greatly and over the past twenty years I have been making a few archival silver prints (usually six to eight each) of the negatives I find most interesting. There are a few vintage prints of some images but others were re-discovered and printed for the first time many years after the negative was made.

In the 1970s I began exploring more introspective visual ideas and more complex printmaking techniques on a separate, parallel path from my documentary work. The rock series contains images from that effort. These images were printed in small editions using a variety of paper and toner combinations to find the right look and feel for each image.

Going forward I am excited by image making possibilities using the new electronic imaging technologies, especially in the realm of printmaking.

In 1920 Edward Weston wrote, "Peace and an hour's time — given these, one creates. Emotional heights are easily attained; peace and time are not." Living in Mount Shasta affords me the peace and time to work on my photographs nearly every day.

Biographical Information

Alexander Lowry has been making personal and professional photographs since 1957. During his career he has been a newspaper photographer and public relations photographer, and for the last 30 years has concentrated on contract work, primarily for educational and conservation organizations. Photo Researchers, Inc. in New York has represented his stock photography since 1964. He taught workshops for University of California, Santa Cruz Extension and others from 1974 through 2004. His photographs have appeared in more than 500 publications worldwide over a span of five decades. He has exhibited widely in both solo and group shows, and his prints are in public and private collections.