"He who does his own work well will find that his first lesson is to know what he is and that which is proper to himself."
--Dostoevsky

My earliest interests in photography lie in my father¹s making of super-8 home movies and my mother¹s nearly religious snapping of Instamatics in the 60s.

I¹ve photographed since 16 years old when I bought my first camera, a Yashika Electro 35. From the beginning, I wanted to take photography seriously, but it took till I was in my late 20s for me to figure out that taking photography ³serious² might mean making it my way of living. In 1990, I asked for a leave of absence from my studies and found a job as a photo researcher with a publishing company.

As a photo editor:
I assigned photo shoots used in editorial magazines, books and television. I worked nine years in photo editing, first for Whittle Communications (magazines and books) and then with Scripps Networks¹ HGTV and DIY Networks. I gave up full-time photo editing in 2003 to try to make it as a freelance photographer.

Education
In college and in graduate school I studied psychology. My emphases were perception and Existential-Phenomenology. Though I didn¹t complete my graduate degree, four years in a Ph.D. program and countless hours of readings in existentialism and the sublime influenced the way I see the world and informs my photography: There is no separation for me between my understanding of the world and description of my life through photography.

I love photography as I love poetry and as I love people. For method, I simply carry my camera with me everywhere and try to photograph well what moves me. Honesty with myself and with my subjects seems to me what photography--and life--is all about.

Artist Statement:
Even I know each image you see here is a confession. Each image is about a will to have something that cannot and should not be kept: meaning, greatness, eternity

My work, over the last ten years, seems a return to an early project of childhood: learning to tell time. It's just one of many undertakings that humbled me into adulthood, but it's the one I feel most obliged to correct. I was a slow learner when it came to understanding hours and seconds. The face of the clock seemed inadequate in comparison to the circumference of my day.

But then, no creature can learn that which his heart has no shape to hold*. As an adult, I remain a dilettante of time, just determined enough to know when I'm late. It seems I was never meant to experience or tell time in hours. In my work, I want to recognize the world and my own heart. Surely this is as much as there is to knowing greatness.

David Andrews
Chattanooga, TN