Karekin Goekjian                                                  LIGHT AFTER DARK

  
                   A profile of photographer Karekin Goekjian by Barry Tanenbaum

If you were asked to identify Karekin Goekjian and you said, "He's the man in the moon",
you'd be close. But if you said that he's the man in the moonlight you'd be even closer.
Actually, Karekin is a talented artist who uses photography to express his inner vision. He's
best known for his nighttime photographs that use little more than moonlight, an assortment
of flashlights and a single portable flash unit to illuminate his subjects. Karekin, a former
newspaper photographer and "stringer" for the Associated press, leverages the magic of 
photography- the cumulative effect of a time exposure on a piece of film- to transform
ordinary scenes and portraits into images so unusual that they seem to open doors to a
parallel universe. It's readily apparent when viewing his work, that Karekin is able to
expertly combine his craftsmanship with his vision to produce some of the finest examples
of 20th Century photographic arts. In fact, examples of his work are in the permanent
collections of nearly three dozen of the finest museums and corporate art collections
in the world. Likewise, his work is regularly featured in solo exhibits. His first book,
Light After Dark, was published in 1994. The University Press of Mississippi published
his second book entitled Light of the Spirit, featuring portraits of Southern Folk Artists.

Of course, Karekin is not the first photographer to make photographs by moonlight nor
is he the first photographer to paint with light or take advantage of long-time exposures.
His art reveals much more than a world that is otherwise invisible to the naked eye.
Karekin has gained control of a difficult process and has spent much of the past 20
years refining his techniques. As a result of camera exposure times that often reach
 1 to 1-1/2 hours, Karekin has learned to overcome numerous technical challenges
both in the camera and in the darkroom.

Here's an example of how Karekin has overcome an annoying color-shifting problem.
Through trial and error he found that Kodachrome 64 film worked best for his long
exposure times, although he also found out that fresh film created an unwanted
green color cast. To compansate for that, Karekin now uses Kodachrome that is
4 to 5 years out-of-date, since he's discovered that old Kodachrome film has a 
tendency to shift toward magenta, which offsets the green cast caused by the time
exposures. In order to ensure a steady supply of film to work with, he carefully
ages his film in much the same way other people might age their wines in a wine
cellar for future use.

Few of my images have been used for book covers. These include:

Intruder in the Dust                 by    William Faulkner
The Hamlet                            by    William Faulkner
The New Gothic   writers include:    Jamaica Kinkaid, Martin Amis, Paul West, Robert Coover, 
                                                     Anne Rice, Scott Bradfield, John Hawkes, Joyce Carol Oates,
                                                     Bradford Morrow, Patrick McGrath, Ruth Randell, Peter
                                                     Straub, Lynne Tillman, Angela Carter and others.
Road Fever                             by   Tim Cahill
Shadows and Cypress              by   Alan Brown
New Austerities                       by   Tito Perdue
Prisoners in a Red-Rose Chain  by   Jeffrey Moore
                                        - More on Publications page -

                         

                           
I was one of seven speakers for the National Geographic's Twenty-fourth Photography Seminar
in Washington, D.C. Other speakers included Cornell Capa, Fran Lebowitz, Colin Jacobson,
Thomas J. Abercrombie, Larry Towell and Greg Mellis.

PICTURING THE SOUTH - 1860 to the present -                    
For the occasion of the 1996 OLYMPICS in Atlanta, Georgia, the HIGH MUSEUM 
OF ART organized an exhibition and published the most important and concise book
that examines how our understanding of Southern history, identity, and character has
been mediated through photography since the mid-nineteenth century. It contains
180 photographs by 105 photographers including,  Harry Callahan, William Eggleston,                                 Walker Evans, Alexander Gardner, Karekin Goekjian, Dorothea Lange, Clarence
John Laughlin, Danny Lyons, John McWilliams, Sally Mann, Carrie Mae West,                                       Eudora Welty, Edward Weston, and  Margaret Bourke-White.

 Six months ago I started using a Nikon D-70 Digital camera for my night work. This
has cut my exposure time to between 5 and 10 minutes with very good results both
in color and sharpness.

   

I hope you enjoy my site and please don't hesitate to contact me about any question.

                                                       e-mail   goekjian@charter.net