Joseph Labate

This website contains my photographic work using digital technology. I began using that technology in the late 1990’s after a couple of decades of analog photography that proceeded and influenced this work. In those early days of digital photography it was not an uncommon reaction when publicly presenting my work to hear responses suggesting that it was not “real” photography because real photography required the use of film and a darkroom. Using a digital camera and a computer was too easy (ha ha).

It was interesting to me that that response was similar to the response that the medium of photography itself and its potential for creating art received at the time of its origin. How could that early seemingly impersonal medium possibly be a vehicle for artistic expression. That was the question that interested me back in the early days of my analog photography and continues in this digitally created work. Investigating that question photography became the means for me to examine a breadth of issues from personal to public ones. Photography is the primary method through which I interact and experience all that surrounds me.