How did you get started taking photos of fossils?
This particular area is world famous for the quality and quantity of its fossils from the Devonian Era. They’re seemingly everywhere. Every time I picked one up, I marveled at its beauty. Each appeared to me like sculpture made by time and nature. So, of course, I had to photograph them. But rather than take pictures of them as scientific objects, I wanted them to be captured in a more romantic way.

While the photographs are really straightforward, taking the actual picture is just the first step in a process. I am a big advocate of what is known as the digital darkroom. In Photoshop, I have a level of control that lets me enhance the subject in my own interpretive way. Printing on watercolor paper provides a texture that moves the image another step away from traditional photography.

Your work appears to be at the confluence of art and science. Is that how you approach it?
I have a decidedly unscientific approach to viewing fossils, but my immersion in the subject has led to a greater appreciation of paleontology. One of the coolest parts is the excitement of finding something that hasn’t seen the light of day in 400 million years, of cracking open a rock to find marine creatures that flourished at the shoreline of an ancient inland sea that stretched to what is today Ohio.

Scientific images are not often seen for their pure visual beauty. But with things like weather charts or USGS maps or Ptolemaic diagrams of the universe, you can use them for the information they contain and also appreciate the wonderful designs created by that information. The fossils contain important scientific information as well the beauty of the natural world.

How about the connection between your art and the 19th century landscape artists?
There is a long history connection between the Catskills and artists. The earliest Hudson River School painters accompanied the first geologists on their forays into the mountains, but the artists also brought along their sketchbooks. In a similar way, I’m out in the field, except I carry along my own hammer and chisel along with my camera.

Your photos have an abstract quality. What do you want people to see?
I would just like people to realize the value of taking a closer look at the world around us. There is natural beauty all around us.

What about fossils inspires you most?
These organic designs seem to grow out of the rock. Sometimes I see in the fossils messages from a distant past, like hieroglyphics. The more I thought about it the more I realized there was something really profound, even spiritual about them. It’s humbling, like staring up at the stars.

How do the fossil images compare to your previous work?
A sense of composition runs through all my work dealing with forms and shapes and lights and darks. Also, many of my personal projects have dealt with the past, including an essay on Ellis Island before its restoration and the industrial ruins of the old Burden Iron Works in Troy. This time the story is one goes back longer in time than we can comprehend.

Art Murphy’s photographs of fossils are included in GEOgraphy, an exhibition at the Greene County Council on the Arts, Catskill Gallery, 398 Main Street, Catskill.

GEOgraphy, an exhibition of fossils, photographs, sculpture, illuminated poetry, prints and jewelry opens Saturday, January 16 at the GCCA’s Catskill Gallery and continues through February 13, 2010, curated by Fawn Potash. An opening reception, featuring a lecture by the New York State Museum’s Geologist, Dr. Chuck VerStraeten, will be held on Saturday, January 16. For more information, call 518 943 3400 or visit www.greenearts.org.