My name is Michael Elenko. I live on Vashon Island, a small ferry-only isle in the Salish Sea. My wife, Dr. Fran Brooks, and I raised our two adult children here. It's a lovely place. If we start going stir crazy (or need a hospital), it's not that hard to escape to Seattle, Tacoma, or the Olympic Peninsula.
I’ve been exhibiting fine art photographs since 1983. Since then, my work has broadened its scope but has retained its focus. Photography has always been my second language.
My grandfather and my great-uncles fulfilled the New York city school class picture market throughout the Great Depression. My grandfather later started the nation’s first color mail-order film processing operation in Queens. This family business involved both my parents and eventually a very young me.
In those days customers sent cash and coin in the mail to pay for their pictures. My job was to sift through a big box of customer coins and extract the rare ones. I also had the run of the “front-end” camera store.
Photography is a big tent. I’ve been fortunate in serving in various roles including newsmagazine publisher, photojournalist, corporate photographer, sports shooter, picture framer, professional artist and exhibition curator.
During the past decade my focus has been on creating images that convey my impressions of the world as channelled through my camera. This is often a very different perception than what our eyeballs and brain gift us with. The challenge is to convert those perceptions to the two-dimensional artwork you see in a gallery or onscreen. I still view this as a magical process.
My through line with photography has always aimed to make visible the unseen. If you, the viewer, can engage with our shared reality just that much more, then I feel that deeper communication has occurred, and my photography is closer to being accomplished.
