Paul Caponigro (b. 1932)

With a career spanning sixty years, Paul Caponigro is internationally regarded as one of the greatest photographers of our time. Born in Boston in 1932, he was already working as a photographer when he first traveled to the western United States in 1953 as a soldier during the Korean War.  In the early 1950s, during an army tour of duty in San Francisco, he met and studied with teachers and students of the West Coast School of Photography including Minor White. During these years his photographs appeared in Aperture magazine and were exhibited at the George Eastman House.  In 1966 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship which enabled him to travel to Ireland where began his lifelong interest photographing megalithic sites like Stonehenge.  In 1976 he made his classic photograph of running white deer titled, "County Wicklow, Ireland."

Caponigro has devoted his life to exploring the natural world and architecture from antiquity.  His vision has its roots in Paul Strand's response to the purity of forms and in the metaphysical/metaphorical tradition of Minor White. His printing reflects a heightened sensitivity toward gray and black tonalities and is considered the best in the world. Beyond the directness of his compositions and attention to details, Caponigro's photographs convey deeper meanings. Whether the subject is a landscape, a solitary apple, a ring of standing stones, or a simple piece of aluminum foil, his pictures invoke the promise of growth and regeneration mingled with timelessness. Paul Caponigro lives in Maine.

Liz Kay