I've been doing documentary and fine art photography for a long time (though not quite as long as this photo of me gripping my dad's old Argus camera case would suggest). During that time I've worked mostly in my native Tennessee and in central North Carolina.

During the past few years, I've been concentrating on large-format night photography. It's a rewarding and completely singular type of shooting. The exposure times range anywhere from 8 minutes to 2 hours for one shot, which is lit by the ambient light available at the scene. Sometimes that lighting is the beautiful cool softness of moonlight (those are always the hours-long exposures!), and sometimes it's the harsh artificiality of sodium vapor street lamps or my own car headlights. I shoot mostly with a 4x5 view camera but occasionally with an 8x10 view camera as well (those are the nifty old bellows cameras where you compose on a ground glass under a dark cloth). A comprehensive interview about this work with the French arts magazine, Edit-Revue, is available here (just click the little British flag for the English version, if you land on the French one).

I've recently been attracted to interior kitchen "landscapes" as well. This inspiration began innocently enough. A set of strawberry caps in an aluminum bowl were too beautiful to throw away. Then the fruit flies came, and they were the fauna to the strawberries' flora. Lately, the action of water in sinks has held a certain fascination. A few samples of this work appeared in the Bull City Arts Collaborative show in the spring of 2009, and you can read more about it here.

Any upcoming exhibitions are listed here, or you can send a blank email to add_me@mjsharp.com to be added to the mailing list. If you're interested in a specific image, some of which are available as limited editioned prints, or if you're interested in a general studio visit (come visit!), send a non-blank email to mj@mjsharp.com.

Please click here for a downloadable (nicely formatted) CV, or you can take your chances and access the html version here (with browser-dependent, almost-indecipherable mystery formatting.