Watersong Circle

For thirty-six years, photographer John R. Tuttle shot exclusively in black and white. It wasn't until the 1980s, when he began watercolor painting, that he became fascinated with color. In the decade that followed, he abandoned his "tones of grey," in favor of color photography and the control and flexibility offered by digital cameras. He currently shoots 98 percent of his work in color, and all of it digitally. Watersong Circle is, in many ways, the culmination of that journey to color. Saturated, lifelike, almost surreal, the images on the page stand as a testament to both the beauty of nature and Tuttle's deftness in capturing it. Tuttle explains, "I strive for a visceral richness of color, tactility of forms, and relationship of tones. I look for a delicious, sometimes creamy and sometimes rhythmic feast of middle values, strong and solid. I use very dark and very light tones carefully and sparingly. They become visual landmarks or references for the immediate messages carried by the interplaying middle tones. It is similar to piano composition in that most works are dominated by the quantity of middle notes, using the relatively fewer lows and highs more as musical seasoning. Just as photographic work is like musical composition, art is art, no matter the medium." He continues, "It is the duty of the artist to honor basic human proclivities and experience in his works. I therefore try to express in my photographs unter-messages relating to the human experience. Artists will use what they can to create their works and deliver their messages through their art." This very human collection also features an anthology of verse that runs alongside Tuttle's fifty photographs. The musings on nature, beauty, gardens and springtime include poems from Basho and Rumi to Keats and Dickinson.