Joel Anderson

I’m a Pennsylvania-based photographer working in classic film and darkroom techniques. My themes vary but my goal is always the same: cutting to the essence of the subject. Although I’m an aerospace engineer and mathematician by training and digital holds no fear I still prefer using film. I use three cameras: a hand-built Richard Phillips 8×16? ultra-large-format view camera, a 1940s-era 4×5 field view camera outfitted with modern lenses, and a medium-format Hasselblad 203fe. The photographs are printed in my traditional wet darkroom using archival methods and materials which produce vivid, long-lasting prints. My affinity for rural scenes comes from growing up on a farm in central Pennsylvania’s surrounded by Amish neighbors. I went on to get my university degrees and worked in the aerospace industry in California and New Mexico before resigning in 1992 to pursue photography full-time. After a four-year stint living & photographing near Yosemite, California I returned to the same farm in Pennsylvania to photograph the changes in rural life which are occurring. My work has been exhibited at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie museum of natural history, the state museum of Pennsylvania, the Robeson gallery at Pennsylvania state university and at the Yosemite museum gallery.