Garry Winogrand once said “I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.” That was exactly my approach to this stair on the side of a water tank near Los Lunas, NM. I liked the way it looked “photographed” much better than the real scene. It took on a surreal aspect that the real scene could not give. Such is the essence of the photographic image when one works with the choices imposed on the artist. The choice of camera frame reduces the scene. All adjacent appearances are removed, leaving us with what it is – a stair, a tree, a grate and a question: “What are we looking at?”

Charlie Cawley grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and currently lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his wife and two dogs. His work has been shown at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, the University of New Mexico Museum in Albuquerque, the Florida Holocaust Museum, the Gregg Museum at NC State University and is in the permanent collection at the St Petersburg Museum of Fine Art in St Petersburg, Florida. He has a BFA from the University of New Mexico and is the author of The Adventures of Charlie and the Incredible Truth Machine.

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