About Rick Pelletier

 

Rick was born and raised in the Maritimes. He borrowed his first box camera in 1960 and began to take many black and white photos; at first to help his drawing skills. At the age of fifteen, he acquired access to a darkroom in a print shop where he was learning to operate an offset printing press.

 

Through the printing and photographic processes Rick soon learned how to acquire the best quality black in the final image.  He realized that detail in the blacks was an essential component in all types of printing. At the same time, he continued to draw and paint in his spare time while learning various aspects of the printing trade.

 

Upon entering the Fine Arts School at university,  he dreamt of being a painter but by graduation he had become fascinated by the relative immediacy of photographic images. Roland Brener and Lewis Baltz played a major role in shaping his imagery. Ongoing dialogue with the conceptual sculptor Roland Brener and visiting artist Lewis Baltz were instrumental in this transition. Baltz, one of the early photographers known to be a, “New Topographer”,  shared work on the Irvine Industrial Park, Tract Housing projects and lectured on his perspective of human altered landscape images.

 

Rick felt that his approach to photography began to evolve from that moment on. He returned to the open road and took every opportunity to reflect and document what was in his thoughts, capturing photographs of what he saw in his own way.

 

He is now retired from teaching ands works as often as he can on a huge backlog of film as well as making new images.

 

Keep posted if you enjoy some of these images as this web site like many others is really another example of a work in progress.