We had the good fortune of connecting with Dennis Church and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Dennis, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
I was in graduate school many years ago studying psychology. I realized that one scientific study just yielded a need for another study with out arriving at any finality. I had started photographing about a year before and some deep intuitive force was pulling me toward the medium. It seemed like I had no choice, that my way to truth was through practicing the art of photography. I have not looked back.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.

I photograph to understand the world. My pictures reveal meaning from the chaotic social landscape that is around us. Layers of commerce, fashion, people, industry, history, traffic, and advertising show our most common intersections. If I do my job well, exposing the underlying tension between chaos and order, my pictures will be useful to others, people of today and those of posterity, for finding meaning in their worlds. This is a documentary/street style of working. My photographs are included in “Bystander. A History of Street Photography”, an important book by widely recognized curator and photography historian, Colin Westerbeck, and internationally recognized photographer, Joel Meyerowitz.

I am currently in the fourth year of photographing on the Tamiami Trail, US Highway 41 from Tampa to Miami, a very important road in Florida’s socioeconomic history. I have begun editing and collaborating for a book that will be published from this work within the next 12 months.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
For a week-long trip I’d take my friend to The Everglades on US Highway 41, The Tamiami Trail, and I would take them there more than once so to show them that the Everglades never disappoints. One trip is not enough for one to absorb the enormity and natural richness there. Since I like to make day trips by car, I would drive up the East coast of Florida along highway A1A. Eating and drinking? I would follow my nose and stop when any place along the way invites me and my friends.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Photography is easily communicated through books which I have collected for several decades. Photo-books have been my major inspiration. Great photographic artists like Eugene Atget, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Helen Levitt, William Eggleston and Lee Friedlander and others have been my mentors in paper form. I can simply pull one of their books from the shelf, spend a little time in their world and I reinforce the original inspiration I got from them.

Website: www.dennischurch.com

Instagram: @dennischurch_photographer

Image Credits
All photographs copyright by Dennis Church with all rights reserved.

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