SAM STAPLETON PHOTOGRAPHY

As the son of a 40 year employee of Eastman Kodak, photography seemed ordained to be a meaningful part of my life, if not my livelihood. My first camera, a Kodak Brownie, was purchased with money I earned at Eastman and among my first images were photos of the smoke plume rising from the 1960 Eastman plant explosion that killed 16 employees including one of my neighbors. With such an incendiary beginning, it's surprising that it has taken me 40+ years to begin the serious pursuit of fine art photography, though I console myself that fine wines also take decades to mature... The next decade brought my wife into my life and together we pursued book and magazine work, generally with a leaning towards history and architecture (see credits below). From Patricia, the most important lesson that I learned was how to use imagery to support a narrative... My third decade was dedicated almost exclusively to documenting our own family narrative as we found our lives increasingly dominated by the..