Today we share the wotk and words of Ralph Maratta.
Would you please tell us about yourself?
At 17, I scraped together $100 from mowing lawns and set my sights on either a telescope or a camera. I chose the Pentax K1000 35mm. That simple camera forced me to learn the
fundamentals. I’d encourage anyone beginning photography to learn the basics first and
understand how an image is made.
I grew up in a loving middle-class family, but not an eclectic one. We
didn’t visit museums, immerse ourselves in the arts or do adventurous stuff
like camp in the woods. My mother’s music, though, profoundly shaped
me from early childhood until I eventually discovered my own. Songs and
scores from artists like Burt Bacharach, The Carpenters, Leonard
Bernstein’s West Side Story, The Mamas & the Papas, and the soundtrack
from Hair gave me some of my first powerful glimpses into storytelling through sound, words, and emotion.
By 13, I found my own influences, and by 15 I was stumbling into entirely new worlds: the
writing of Salinger, the music of Pink Floyd, the absurd brilliance of Monty Python and Saturday Night Live, Woody Allen films, and my all-time favorite, The Graduate. Suddenly I was hearing and seeing things that neither school, community, nor my parents had prepared me for. There was no going back to ordinary life after those revelations. Throw on top early love and heartbreak, and I was opened up in new ways and the act of creating was the only way for me to release it all.
I was naturally good with a camera and, unlike most other subjects, I had a strong desire to
understand photography on a deeply technical level. But it wasn’t until my freshman year of
college, while majoring in finance, that a classmate introduced me to the darkroom. My mind was blown.
To this day, the darkroom remains a transformational place for me. The moment I step into it, something changes. I become focused, patient, slow, methodical, disciplined, even
perfectionistic, all the things that don’t come naturally to me in everyday life. Twelve hours may go by and I’d barely notice or be hungry or tired or anything like that. The dim light, music, solitude and creating is very stimulating to me. I came home that spring semester and announced that I was leaving the finance program to pursue photography instead.
My career began in commercial photography, though life eventually carried me, somewhat
unexpectedly, into the corporate world, where I built a career in communications. But the pursuit of art never left me. I dedicated myself to it, alongside everything else. And decades later, I began to recognize the connection between my business role and my photography one: both were rooted in shaping perspective and telling stories. Each informed the other in ways and in the end, they were never really separate paths at all.
Where did you get your photographic training?
I went to school in Manhattan, The Center for the Media Arts. After a lackluster performance my freshman year as a finance major, I excelled. More importantly, I cared.
Who has had an influence on your creative process?
The musician, writer and composer Peter Gabriel has influenced me most. Oddly enough, music informs my creative process, by far. When you think of musical traits like rhythm, melody, counterpoint, contrasts, tone, lightness/darkness, etc etc, they are inherently in visual communications, also. His music delicately balances an abstraction and what I call, “loose” storytelling. In his music there is a sharp edge and also a warmth (sometimes a heat), that allows the audience to sink their personal story into his pallet. With that said, I have troves of musicians and composers that inspire me daily.
Of course, painters and photographers are also great inspirations, but sometimes the visuals are too literal an influence, where music provides me an intangible feeling I can try to translate to an image.
Please tell us about an image (not your own) that has stayed with you over time.
Christina’s World, by Andrew Wyeth gripped me the first time I saw it at the Museum of Modern Art. At first, I didn’t fully understand it, but it immediately struck a romantic chord: a woman lying in a field, gazing toward a distant farmhouse across open land.
Later, I learned the deeper and more tragic reality behind the figure. But there was still a romance about the image. Like much of Andrew Wyeth’s work, the painting’s muted
palette, rolling fields of tall grass, stark lines cutting through the landscape and architecture, and the mystery of a figure turned away from the viewer create something that, at least
for me, blurs the line between storytelling and abstraction.
What image of yours would you say taught you an important lesson?
By far, this is not an image I think of as my best photograph, but it taught me perhaps life’s most important lesson: there is potential all around us, in everything we do, regardless of what the probabilities may seem. It was a real-life example straight out of the little book, The Alchemist, which I would read two decades later and realize that what I
experienced was a genuine, yet invisible force in life.
The image was taken on one of my last long travel’s, this one to Tibet. It was a period when I
wasn’t sure how I was going to make a livable wage. In truth, I was deeply worried about how I would find my way in the world when I got back. Scared even.
After returning home, I landed my first-ever exhibition and was having my work framed. One
day, I received a call from the frame shop. A hiring manager from a Fortune 100 company had seen one of my prints, wanted to buy it, and asked to meet me. I had no degree that matched the company’s requirements, let alone the MBA needed just to secure an interview. But this is the beauty of the unseen magic that exists all around us. Through that chance acquaintance, I landed an interview, got the job, met a mentor who showed me strengths I didn’t even know I possessed, and ultimately found my path for the long term.
So it was a photograph taken with no thoughts of financial gain or recognition that, in many
ways, ended up saving me. The lesson was simple: you never know. You have to put yourself out there authentically and trust the process, even when the outcome is uncertain. To paraphrase the bestselling fable I mentioned earlier, when someone brings genuine focus and heart to an endeavor, the universe has a way of conspiring to help them along. Fear, on the other hand, is one of the most growth-stunting energies around us. A real devil.
There was, however, another lesson that resonates with me even more today. In a materially demanding world, true fulfillment and happiness require pursuits that have nothing to do with money or accolades. I feel it’s essential to have pursuits that have nothing to do with money, even if they become costly. I see them as investments. I would even go a step further and say that, in American culture, our relentless pursuit of wealth has become disease-like. I understand that wealth means different things to different individuals. But, I would also argue that if wealth made us happy, our rates of depression and disconnection in an affluent nation would not be so profound. I’ll leave it at that.
What part of image-making do you find the most rewarding?
I love the stage after the photographs are made, the darkroom work, editing, printing,
sequencing, and assembling them. In the field with a camera, I’m focused on making a strong negative or capture–being on technically, compositionally and quickly. It can be demanding. But once the images are gathered together, I begin discovering what they actually mean to me. It becomes an internal, reflective, almost therapeutic act. Add late nights and deep music, and it’s cathartic.
Please click on images to see a different view.
How do you work through times when nothing seems to work?
I’m most passionate about this question and ask it of nearly every person I meet. In short, I “let go.” Consciously practicing this has shaped my last several projects to the point where it now feels like a tangible, hard-wired process.
The first real lesson came while working on a series in the Hoh Rainforest. I had an end-in-mind for the work, but struggled to make sense of the endless green-on-green tones and isolate meaningful subjects. I produced plenty of failures. On one trip, three hours from home, I gave myself two and a half days to finally solve it.
But the rainforest did what rainforests do best: steady, relentless rain wiped out my hopes on the first day. Not wanting to retreat to my crappy motel room, I crawled beneath a hollowed-out fallen tree and sat there for hours. It forced me to stop trying so hard and simply experience what was around me. My body decompressed. When the rain finally paused, I picked up the camera and began working almost effortlessly. I stopped looking so hard and started seeing instead. That shift gave me the breakthrough I needed to finish the series.
I carried that lesson with me 18 months later while working on a project at a historic fort along the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I was fascinated by the place but couldn’t pinpoint what I truly felt or wanted to express. I visited repeatedly, trying everything — color, black and white, large format, medium format, digital — all without success.
One day, determined to make something happen, I gave it another try. After a few hours, the same frustration set in. But this time I recognized the pattern. Instead of worrying about being “creative” or making “great art,” I waved the white flag and surrendered. I sat by the fort with my dog and simply enjoyed the moment and being there. About thirty minutes later, I drifted into a daydream, imagining the fort under attack and inventing stories about its response. Somehow those imagined scenes merged with my own political angst about aggression and conflict, and suddenly a title entered my mind: The Fortress Walls Whispered Back. I imagined the fort resisting violence not with force, but with truth and moral conviction. Silly maybe, but immediately afterward, I stood up and began seeing exactly what I wanted to photograph. When the color negatives came back days later and I started to work with the images, I realized I only needed a few more shoots to complete the series.
Today, my process is much simpler. Sometimes the work comes easily. Sometimes it completely falls apart. But when things go sideways now, I no longer get down or hard on myself. I actually smile, because I recognize the moment as a signal to let go.
My most recent series, Under the Summer Solstice and Strawberry Moon, which eventually led to several exhibitions, was born from failure. I had spent months planning a night series in the Yakima River Canyon, hoping to photograph under moonlight. After hours of driving the canyon roads at two in the morning, it became obvious the conditions simply weren’t going to work. Months of planning and camping felt wasted. But instead of getting discouraged, I surrendered to it. The next morning, while driving to find a trail for my dog and me, I noticed shapes in the deep shade of a basalt wall I had passed dozens of times before. Suddenly I saw forms and textures I had never noticed. I jumped out of the car and frantically photographed nearly 85 percent of the project in under an hour. On the drive home, I already knew exactly how the finished work would look.
At this point, I’m convinced surrendering to the subject matter is a tangible creative process. And when I’m stuck, it’s the process I trust.
Why do you create?
I’d like to say that I create out of an inner need, but in fact I create mostly because it feels like a responsibility I have. Like knowing that this is something that is important for me to do, for personal reasons. I can also safely say that I can measure how I’m doing, emotionally, physically and spiritually, related to my creative work. These things evolve and change day-to-day, but when I’m creating well, I know I’m in a good place. And, vice-versa.
What tools have you found essential in the making of your work?
The most essential tool for me, is the discernment of what I’m trying to express rather than lining up the tools. I’m not a gear geek, though I toggle between film and digital capture, depending on the project. I can go from a toy camera to a 4×5 large format in a hot second. I generally use normal to modestly-wide focal length lenses to mimic most how the eye naturally sees. I don’t subscribe to getting into the game of what’s better, digital or film, large or small format, etc etc. The best thing a creator can do is find tools that best support what one is trying to express.
Is there something in photography that you would like to try in the future?
I have a current desire to play with longer focal length lenses, a flatter perspective and color. I’m currently percolating on a project around the idea that we are more or less all matter moving through space and time.
How does your art affect the way you see the world?
This question doesn’t fully resonate with me, though the reverse does. I tend to see the world less in terms of labeling every event or outcome as good or bad, and more as one vast, messy, beautiful field of energy we navigate, filled with countless doors we either step through or refrain from.
I also believe that most of the answers truly important to us already exist either within us or all around us. Aesthetic experiences are one way we uncover them. I think of them as signposts along the way. Whether found in profound natural settings, urban landscapes, or the quiet rhythms of everyday life, the information is there in some abstract form if we are paying attention.
The world affects my images in the sense that I try to capture these intangible moments, many of which are outwardly mundane. I’m as moved as anyone by grand scenery or monumental experiences, but I often find deeper truth and beauty in the simple. In a way, this applies to love for me as well. It’s easy to feel love for someone on a moonlit beach at midnight, strumming guitars and fending off sharks while surfing together, but I think the real measure of love is feeling it when your partner looks like a wreck, scrubbing a bathroom on a Saturday afternoon. I digress. Maybe that’s another interview sometime.
What’s on the horizon?
More balancing my time to move forward with new projects and make connections with new galleries for some showing opportunities. In between, exercise, sauna, time in nature,
urban advetures and walks with my beastie, Maggie the Dog.
Thank you Ralph. To learn more about the work of Ralph Maratta please click on his name.
Beautiful Work!
Stunning interview! Just great!