About Richard J Auger
FLORIDA NOIR SERIES. Growing up in South Florida, as well as living throughout the state over the years, Richard always appreciated the enchanting, magical, and haunted quality of Florida’s woodlands, swamps, and coastlines. With the Florida Noir Series, Richard searches and hikes Florida’s most remote locations to produce a line of photographs to captures these qualities. Rich in texture and life, Florida’s qualities are shown best in the infrared spectrum, which he exclusively uses with for this series.
THE ARTIST. Richard Auger, a full-time fine-art photographer and workshop educator, has become established in the Central Florida art world only 2 years after leaving FSU with his Masters Degree. From a very young age, Richard has always carried a camera and was determined to pursue photography as a career. In High School, he was an American Visions Nominee and Gold Key winner in the Scholastics Art and Writing competition, submitting a photograph of the Everglades National Forest. While studying wedding, commercial, and portrait photography in college, Richard continued to explore the Florida Woodlands as well as study traditional black and white processes to perfect a winning style, which he later named the ‘Florida Noir Series’.
ART FESTIVALs. With major success in the late 2009 to early 2010 art festival circuit, Richard has scaled back his wedding and portrait photography business to focus solely on fine art photography. Starting in October 2010, he will participate in over 22 juried fine-art festivals, and has already started the season with a ‘best in show’ at Lake Mary Heathrow Festival of the Arts.
FILM PROCESS. Mediums include 4×5, 6×7, and 6×12 film negatives. Every step of the process is hand-crafted by the artist, including photographic printing, mounting, and construction of solid-wood frames.
IN HIS OWN WORDS. There is something magical about the woodlands, swamps, and backroads of Florida; twisting trees through wood bridges, large birds, an abundance of wildlife, and even the horse-farms; all with an almost haunted, mystical quality. Florida shares much of its landscape characteristics with other parts of the South. While there are no ‘glorious’ western style mountain landscapes, Florida is nonetheless enchanting and loved by its residents, especially to those rare Florida natives like myself. This season, I’ve turned down many commercial jobs to pursue my favorite type of photography, starting with the Florida Noir series. For the next two years, I will be traveling around the state and country to expand this series.
