Photography: Soulcatcher Studio: Bill Schwab

"I received the photograph this afternoon and I absolutely LOVE it. I am so anxious to take it home so I can see which wall gives it the best light. I would like to thank you for your high degree of professionalism. It has been a pleasure doing business with you."
Lila P., satisfied customer

Maple - Torchlight, Emmet County, MI, 2003

Soulcatcher Studio is pleased to welcome Bill Schwab to our stable of esteemed photographic artists. Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1959, Bill Schwab's fascination with photography began at an early age. With a Kodak Brownie and a home darkroom kit received as a gift from his father, he taught himself to process film and contact print at age twelve. Following a high school curriculum emphasizing the arts, his formal education began in 1978 at Central Michigan University Art School, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in photography in 1983. From there he moved to New York City to apprentice under and assist a well-known commercial/fine art photographer. In New York, Schwab gained the necessary insight into the world of commercial photography to help him realize a successful career spanning nearly two decades.

Although his style has gradually developed and progressed over the years, the common theme that threads through this growing body of work has been that of the urban landscape. Emphasizing an ethereal, atmospheric quality is imperative in reaching the more emotional as opposed to the literal and for this he chooses to make photographs during inclement weather and challenging lighting situations. The choice of what to photograph is coupled with a very subtle printing style in the yet boundless attempt to make each image reign powerful in emotion and simplicity.

With the camera he makes study of urban culture, past and present, through architecture and artifact. Working mainly in lower light situations, he shoots mostly in early morning and at night emphasizing an abstract, ethereal quality in the images. He has spent extensive time over the years on several extended projects and commissions including ongoing work on Belle Isle, a unique island park in the Detroit River border between the US and Canada. The industrial Rouge River basin anchored by Henry Ford's historic Rouge Plant and the ruins of northern Michigan's long abandoned copper mining industry in the Keweenaw Peninsula. More recently Schwab has spent a great deal of time exploring the ever-changing landscapes of Iceland.

With a continually evolving style born of this interest in the changing urban landscape, coupled with his love of the more solitary natural environment, Schwab's images are becoming more widely known, it is in turn becoming part of a growing number of private, public and corporate collections. These include the George Eastman House: International Museum of Photography and Film in New York.

Print Information: All photographs are selenium toned silver gelatin prints with an approximate image size of 8x8 inches. Printed in limited editions of 25, they are then mounted and over-matted to reveal the photographer's signature and date in the lower right hand corner of the print and edition number in the lower left. Individual print information and another signature can found on the mount au verso, which is 16x20 inches in overall size and ready to frame. Prices start at $700, increase as the edition sells out and are subject to change without prior notice.

Click here to view our exhibition, "Bill Schwab: Gathering Calm - Photographs 1994~2005".

Click here to view our latest exhibition, "Bill Schwab: Elemental ~ New Photographs".

Signed copies of Bill Schwab's sold out, first edition monograph, "Gathering Calm:
Photographs 1994~2004" are available in our bookstore.

Other photographs by this artist are also available. Please contact Soulcatcher Studio
if you are interested in these or any other images.

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