ArtTalk with Don Carson & Susan Murphy

Don Carson is a photographer whose work bridges decades of commercial mastery and artistic experiment. After early studies in psychology and photography, he moved to New York in 1976, apprenticing with Robert Mapplethorpe, Lord Snowdon, Henry Groskinsky, Howard Sochurek, Sol Leiter, and other leading figures. During the 1980s he established an independent practice in architectural, industrial, and editorial
photography, with publications in Smithsonian, Time, Sunset, House Beautiful, and 50 Plus, and corporate clients including Carnegie Hall and Allied-Signal.

Carson’s artistic practice took new direction in the 1990s, when he and his wife, dancer and aerialist Susan Murphy, began photographing together in wilderness landscapes of the American West. Using a medium-format Kodak Graflex XL, he developed an in-camera masking technique that sequentially layered exposures, producing seamless images where body and landscape
merge across time. Every print was hand-crafted, from darkroom work to custom stone-like frames.