Holt Webb
Chattanooga, TN - United States
Holt Webb - Fine Artist
Member Since: 01/30/2013
Holt Webb – Photographer, writer... artist
Wild Mustangs, Oil Spills, Route 66, the Airplane Graveyard... Holt Webb has lived an adventurous life.
Having recently completed the first part of a journey for his Vanishing America Project where conservation photojournalism meets Fine Art, Holt is now embarking on a new journey... a journey to pursue a career as a photographic artist by exploring a new body of work, new media and new ideas. His artistic goal is to effect change with beautiful images that would stir your soul, tug on your heartstrings, and portray the world not as we see it with our eyes, but as we see it in our minds.
Holt was born and raised in Alpharetta, Georgia, a northern suburb of Atlanta, and graduated from the University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Photography. He became interested in photography at the age of ten when he received his first camera as a reward for selling Holiday cards door to door in his neighborhood. His first exclusive, private exhibition was actually sponsored by the his alma mater, the University of Georgia.
Since then Holt has had numerous exhibitions of his art across the country from San Diego to Atlanta, including a group exhibition at Loyola University about the 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill. His work is also in the collections of San Diego Lyric Opera, Trump Properties, Morgan Stanley, and numerous local and regional business in California and the Southeast.
As a professional fine art photographer, Holt has spent the majority of his life behind the camera creating unique breath-taking imagery that makes a statement about the world in which we live.
In 2007, Holt founded the Vanishing America Project, a multiyear photographic project using fine art photography as a medium to document and preserve those aspects of our culture, country and environment that are in real danger of disappearing forever in the next few generations--from wild horses, small towns and ways of life to primeval forests, industrial decay, and forgotten wetlands. Much of Holt's work from this project has been featured in professional and travel publications including cover stories for the UK's premiere 4x4 magazine and RV Life.
Holt has recently developed a new art form that stands out in the photography realm. He uses a specialized tangible technique he has named “Sentire” (to feel) that gives a three-dimensional depth to each photograph, thereby strongly enhancing the image’s texture and the emotions present when he captured the original scene.
Holt currently works and resides in Chattanooga, TN.
“I've been on the road for four years, living in a vegetable-oil-powered motorhome traveling from state to state on my Vanishing America Project’s journey of discovery. I’ve shared my images, stories and videos with fans through my website, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, local news interviews and magazine articles that I have written. This was a personal project and was self-funded through fundraising, hard work and part-time jobs that are often completely unrelated to the project itself. My new journey has brought me to Chattanooga, Tennessee (one of the best places in America to be an artist) as I pursue a new path for my artistic growth. And the first step in that growth is the development of a new body of work I call The Sentire Collection. 'Sentire', loosely translated from Italian as 'feel', references both the emotional content of my imagery and the tactile quality of this unique two-dimensional body of work.
Though I consider myself a Fine Art Photographer, I enjoy manipulating my photographs in digitally to create unique compositions. Recently I have begun manipulating my work into painterly images that enhance the emotions and the textures I've always seen in my mind but have been unable to share with the public. When I combine this new technique with the ability to print on a variety of media, I find that I've discovered an art form that stands out in the photographic realm, delivering results that are exactly what I have always been searching for. This specialized process of making the digital tangible allows me to form an abstract interpretation of each image that expresses the emotions present when I captured the original scene. Exploring this 'new' media has expanded my creativity as an artist, has brought me into the world of being an artisan and has opened up a new market for my creativity.”
The Sentire Collection involves traditional photography, digital imaging, digital printing and the touch of the artists' hand -- a combination rarely found in two-dimensional artistic media today. This approach makes a very subtle statement about the technological times in which we live, yet still maintains ties to traditional artistry. What separates this new body of work from any other 'mixed' media is that it is digital from start to near-completion, with the human hand applying the finishing touches, making it almost indistinguishable from a traditional oil painting. It involves the camera, the computer, the digital printer and that staple of artists through the centuries... the paintbrush. But, for all of its technology, this work also embraces an environmentally-conscious sensibility, for each image will be printed on a wide variety of surfaces (specifically recycled wood panels and metal sheets), creating a technological hybrid of image and tactile creation that helps define a new genre of wall art while embracing the time-honored traditions of photographers and painters alike.
