We are pleased to share the work of Walt Duddington. His portfolio was seleced as a work of Merit in the 2025 Rfotofolio Call.

Please tell us about yourself.

I’m an Oregon native living in Beaverton, Oregon. I retired as a sales executive in the telecommunications industry after 38 years. I’ve also had other varied interests in my life:  volunteer fireman, Air National Guard avionics technician, reserve police officer, business consultant, college adjunct professor, nonprofit board member. In between all of this, my wife Monica and I raised our two boys.  She retired from teaching and began a successful career as a writer.  Inspired by her, I retired from a paycheck in 2016, and began to vigorously pursue my long-dormant passion, photographic art.  Today, we enjoy the “retired life”, pursuing our artistic passions through literature, travel, art, and music, and our extended family.

Where did you get your photographic training?

Most of my artistic education has been self-taught. I’ve taken classes online, and many workshops covering much of the craft. I also attended classes at Newspace Center for Photography in Portland (now closed). To learn and understand art, I’m a huge reader, and have studied the work of prominent artists in photography, painting, and some sculpture. In the last several years, much of my photographic education is the result of teaching and mentoring by my friend Ray Bidegain, a Portland fine art photographer and printmaker. My involvement in art organizations has also provided me with a broad understand of visual art and enabled artistic growth of my work. My ambition is to never stop learning, in whatever form works best for me.

Who has had an influence on your creative process?

In the beginning as I learned and appreciated the history of photography, it was a variety of the “Old Photography Masters” and the Pictorialists, really. In the past several years, my photography teacher and good friend Ray Bidegain has been a huge influence. Seldom does a day or two go by that we fail to chat, text, or go make pictures together. I have learned so much from him about making art that reflected my curiosities—what I really care about—that which leads me along my journey. And my wife continues to be my best critic, inspiration, and friend.

Please tell us about an image (not your own) that has stayed with you over time.

Tough question, trying to narrow it down to a single picture…. Well, first of all, any work of Ray Bidegain’s. I’m lost in his sensitive and beautiful creamy gravures and platinum prints. I own several of his prints and handmade books, which I love. Josef Sudek’s work is gorgeous, especially, “Sunday Afternoon at Kolin Island” …Steichen…Lange… Frank Kunishige’s work… Wright Morris… David Plowden… Ruth Bernhard… Harry Callahan. I guess I’m pretty wide when it comes to my personal taste and favorites. I could go on, with a heavy emphasis on the Pictorialists. But let me add this about Wright Morris: I discovered his work several years ago. I saw his photography,then later realized he also was a writer. So when I read his stories, in my mind’s eye, I think of my grandma growing up in Nebraska on a farm. I imagine a photograph I would want to make. It would be inspired by Morris’s narrative.

But specifically, I’m pleased to have on my wall Ray Bidegain’s platinum print he made at a place on the Columbia River where my dad often fished. Every time I see it, I’m reminded of dad coming home at the end of a long day of fishing with a creel of fish and dumping them into the laundry tub until he could clean them and take them to my mom in the kitchen. Watching them swim around in the water… Creating or bringing back a memory, telling a story with personal impact, that’s the kind of affect I hope to make on a viewer with my prints… something which makes an indelible memory for them and touching them personally.

What image of yours would you say taught you an important lesson?

Just about every picture I make, and every subject in my pictures, has something to teach me. I’m still very much on a steep learning curve. Most of all, I learn to pay attention to details, slow down, and not make the obvious picture. I think of my print, “Oysterman’s Holiday” … there’s not much to like about an ugly old boat beached on dune grass. I nearly walked right past it! Now I see it as gorgeous, as telling the story of an oysterman taking a day off and mowing his lawn or going skiing. I’ve made that print in platinum, gravure, and inkjet. It still reminds me to pay attention!

Please tell us about the work you submitted to the Rfotofolio Call.

The theme of my submitted work is “Rural Life”. I am fortunate to live in an area of the country where vignettes of rural life can be a daily occurrence. From my suburban neighborhood, a ten-minute walk or short drive can put me in wetlands, forest, or small farms. A slightly further trip lands me in prime rural areas, filled with working farms and ranches. These places speak to me, taking me back to an earlier time: to country gravel roads, corn and hay fields, creating a nostalgic mood that appeals to me.

I am a history buff and outdoors person and blessed with DNA of Swedish farmers who came to the U.S. in the 19th century. I am passionate about the rural life and truly feel this in my bones as I roam the countryside. “3 Cows and a Tree” is a serendipitous moment of cattle following their own instincts. “Ballston Siding” tells the story of an abandoned railroad siding, in a once thriving village in the middle of farm country. “Echo” shows the vastness of the farms, occasionally dotted with their landmark trees used to delineate fields. “Rural Free Delivery” harkens back to the early days when homes in farm country became “on the grid” in the late 19th century as the Post Office expanded their delivery to individual farms. “Seeds and Silos” is but an icon to represent the thousands of silos in farm country which store and supply seed and grain. “The Holiday” reminds us that occasionally even the hardworking farmers take a vacation. “The Old Farm Road” is a view of a centuries-old transportation route through the trees and fields, trod first by wagons and horses, and now by trucks and all-terrain vehicles. Taken together, these vignettes tell the story of our history, of the land, and the people who work it. The pictures are full of romance, nostalgia, and mood of a time and place we don’t often see. Instead of a strictly documentarian approach, I hope to show it in artful terms.

What part of image-making do you find most rewarding?

For me, it’s two things: first, the discovery of the subject— the picture at the moment of shutter release. To get to that point, I may have spent days exploring an area to understand it. And second, when I pull the print off the printer, or out of the developer, and it reveals itself to me in a special way.  Making my first platinum print was very moving for me. It reminded me that 100 years ago, another photographer I may never have heard of, felt the same way when their print emerged from the soup. I felt very connected to the craft and art.

How do you work through times when nothing seems to work?

That’s part of every day, I think.  A lack of inspiration, “what to do now?” can hit me. Recently, I’ve found that stubbornly pushing through those feelings and being open to whatever I come across as a subject, works for me…. most of the time.  Occasionally, I get away from whatever I’m working on and take a break for a day or week.  Going to coffee with Ray Bidegain. Trying to play golf sometimes works.  Just as artmaking is at times futile, golf’s an exercise in futility, at least for me, but a big break in my routine. Plus, I get to see my buddies.

What tools have you found essential in the making of your work?

Hot coffee in my tall mug, a rural county road map, and my 4-wheel drive truck.  Seriously.

But the other essential is that I have to be exploring my interests with an open mind and let myself chance upon my pictures. Let the picture come to me. I try hard not to “over plan” a photo exploration. But of course, I need to start with an idea of where I’m headed.And a county road map helps!

Is there something in photography that you would like to try in the future?

Somedays the Muse speaks to me,and insists that I explore my world further, maybe in a different way. I think I’d like to make a book of some sort, of my rural life portfolio. I’d like to leave my children and grandchildren something that’s a “legacy” piece, personal,and tells them a bit of my story and our family ancestors’ story.

How does your art affect the way you see the world?

Great question.  My buddy Ray Bidegain once made a comment about a color landscape picture of mine… “looks like Andrew Wyeth” he said. I knew a little bit about Wyeth, so I researched his work and his story, and I started to see rural life in a new way. It clicked. Until I made a concerted effort to explore rural country life, farm life, I felt that maybe I was “checking the boxes” … portraits, still life, landscape, figurative, street, etc.

When my mom passed, I inherited boxes of century-old pictures,of people that kind of looked like me, and places that could have been familiar, but I didn’t know specifics. Yet with all this stuff, I made a connection with my family’s past when I started looking at rural life.  My grandparents on both sides were farming at some time or other. One of those inherited boxes had my grandpa’s farm journal: every penny he spent on the farm he accounted for in this book. The crops, what he paid for a box of nails, the weather—all there. He kept track of it all.

As a little girl in the early 1930s, my mom would ride the train with my grandmother to Bemidji,Minnesota to visit her Swedish bachelor uncles’ farm for the summer. Real “Lake Wobegon”- type stuff. My other grandmother was born and raised on a farm in Nebraska in the early 20th century… the world and time of Wright Morris. A trip to Iowa last year made me feel that I could tell a story about what many people have in common— a family story of rural life. When I see the landscape,see the people and their world,I feel that connectedness among us. The perceived differences between us seems to fade in stature. I think this is what inspires me—to visually tell the stories that so many of us share in our backgrounds and heritage. So I say that it’s in my DNA.

What’s on the horizon?

I have so much yet to do! I will continue building my rural life portfolio, perhaps reaching further away from home—more exploring my family’s Midwest heritage in Nebraska, Minnesota, and South Dakota. A larger portfolio will come from that… I also think focusing close to home and the stories of people in the rural life may come out of that effort.  Potentially my legacy book project will emerge from this as well… I could go on, the list is endless!I must keep my nose to the grindstone!

Thanks again to Rfotofolio for giving me the opportunity to share my work!

To learn more about the work of Walt Duddington please click on his name.