Interviewing photographer Charlotte Watts was an experience unlike any other artist I've written about. Whether a movie star, symphony conductor, Broadway diva, or author, they all make conscious eye contact, imploring their thoughts to be heard by connecting to the interviewer. Not exactly "selling" themselves or their work, but definitely trying to establish a connection.

When I ask her questions, Watts closes her eyes and, after moments of contemplation, talks about her art as if envisioning the light and images. It seems to make little difference that I am in the room.

Light and image and motion are the elements that make her photography unique. Taking pictures of birds in her backyard hardly sounds artistic. (Don't most people look out their kitchen windows and notice the robin in spring or the flitting hummingbird?)

But, taking still pictures that defy time and space, capturing images that inspire action, all the while daring the viewer to look intimately within his soul, is what Watts is all about.

Meet Charlotte Watts.

I can't separate my work from my being. When I think of myself, I think of myself as a photographer.

When people define photography, they say that it "stops time" and to me that's not what photography does. The good image, or right image, resonates in your brain and it brings back all images. The [photographic] image just starts the process of motion. It's a sensation of déjà vu or a dream. And a good photograph, one that works, will bring that image to the forefront again. That's what I want my images to do - start the brain working. It's a trigger.

I started taking pictures when I was eight years old with a Brownie in my grandmother's backyard in Southern California. She had lived a long time in Hawaii. When she moved back to the mainland, she planted tropical flowers and plants that reminded her of Hawaii. When I visited her, I photographed them with my little Kodak Brownie.

I also remember taking pictures of our family's move across the United States. We went by train because my parents wanted us to see the country and I photographed the landscape with the same Brownie. When I look back at these old photographs, I see and feel the motion from the train. I still have some of those old photographs. I realize now, motion has played a part in my work from the very beginning.

For a while I photographed with a Diana camera. (Isn't that a wonderful name for a camera-goddess of the hunt and the moon!) It's a 70's camera that was manufactured in Japan and originally cost about $2.00. It has a wonderful plastic lens that does weird things. It has a center sharpness and then at the periphery the image is very fuzzy, which is what the human eye does. The Diana has light leaks and you have to tape it up with black tape or you can let the light streaks in, whatever. I have four or five of them now. They're collectors' items and some photographers use them exclusively. If you ever find one in a junk store, grab it! The film is two and a quarter/120, so it's a pretty good sized image. Again, in addition to focus, there is a lot of motion or ambiguity using the Diana.

I started doing good black & white work when I moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1990. I continued to shoot with the Diana. My work involved forest clear cuts, and other areas of the environment man has destroyed like the Salton Sea. This B&W work was in some ways color work, because it was highly toned-split-toned using chemicals such as Selenium, Copper and Gold which were applied locally with a brush. Very complex, unusual and one of a kind images were made that way.

When I was forced to recuperate for several long months on the couch after my umpteenth ankle surgery, I kept from going bonkers by trying digital photography. In 2000, I bought my first digital camera and laptop which I didn't even know how to open. I'd crutch it over to the Calla Lilies (not a bad photographic subject) and made my first digital images-again B&W. I intended to use an inkjet printer to print large negatives on transparent media so that I could make large Platinum/Palladium contact prints. However, I was soon able to make large B&W inkjet prints, and then inkjet color became better, and more and more archival. This opened up a new vision to me, or at least old visions re-emerged. For the last three years, my work has been almost exclusively color.

I live on thirty acres with a pond and I'm interested in light and the animals and the birds that live there. I don't have to go very far to work. I photograph water because it's the beginning of life. I lived on the beach for a long time and if you observe the shore and the water churning, and you can look for hours, there's no doubt how life began.

My scientific life, as an emergency physician, affirmed to me the importance of art. Life is so brief for humans. We have a tiny little chance of making any difference, any impact. Making great art is much more important than saving lives-in the long run anyway.

Most of my work revolves around nature, although I do portraits. A lot of the portraits are commissioned. Of course, there's the portrait of Road Kill - the Fawn. The Road Kill portfolio began with a barn owl I found on I-5 in California, in an area where many owls are killed by early morning, fast moving cars. I could not leave her on the road side. I picked the owl up and drove back home, and then, of course, knew I had to photograph her, penance maybe. The Road Kill series is small and in several portraits I am nude holding them, perhaps to be as vulnerable as the animals are. One is of a coyote hanging from my friend John's arms-roped to them outstretched as Christ on the cross-Coyote Died for Your Sins. The last was of a fawn that I saw hit by a pickup truck while driving to work-Madonna and Fawn - Asleep in My Mother's Arms. That was the final one. I couldn't do any more. They bring me such sadness I can barely think of them, much less look at them.

I work exclusively in digital now. I do my own printing. My printer is limited in width to 24 inches which is still pretty big and then the length can be as long as the image. I photograph with a digital camera, then print using Epson "Ultrachrome Inks" and an Epson "Stylus Pro 7600 Printer" onto Hahnemuhle watercolor papers. This combination of inks and papers has an archival rating of more than 100 years-much longer than any other color process. My images are enhanced to some extent on the computer, but mostly just made ready for printing. The painterly appearance to my images is done in the camera.

There is a poem by Raymond Carver that inspires me:
 

Late Fragment And did you get what You wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself Beloved by the earth.

 

Excerpt from: A New Path To The Waterfall Raymond Carver

Eye To Eye	Four The Strait Of Juan De Fuca	Gull—Changing Itself To A Higher Life Form
Lunar Eclipse	Orchid 1	Of Havens
Progress of Light—Shallows at Port Williams, 02/18/05	Two Hearts: My Sister's and Mine	The Unbearable Beauty Of Being—Maples In Our Front Yard