I first became interested in photography and darkroom work when I was about 12 years old. I worked on my high school newspaper and was a member of the Silver Spring Camera Club. I decided to make a career of photography and studied at The Rochester Institute of Technology. In my junior year, I attended The Polytechnic of Central London (Now the University of Westminster.) I received a BS degree with high honors in Professional Photography from RIT.
My original photographic interest was journalism in the style of W. Eugene Smith, Henri Cartier Bresson, and other great photographers. Once in school I was exposed to a broader range of possibilities for applying photography and also fine art. Eventually I gravitated to architectural and interior photography, and that has been the primary focus of my commercial photography career. My clients include ad agencies, design firms, builders, architects, interior designers, and developers. I have served as a chapter president and national director of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP.)
Since 2008 I have been expanding my photographic horizons to incorporate personal art projects. The initial idea was to combine my vision as an architectural and panoramic photographer with my post processing skills to make new interpretations of iconic structures in Washington DC. These reflect various aspects of abstract and surrealistic art that has always been an interest of mine. I completed a group of about 25 of these images to form what I call “Washington DC as Only Alan Goldstein Sees it.” These images employ a variety of techniques from assembling various panoramic small images into a whole to taking one image and duplicating and assembling it into another form. I try not to limit myself too much and look to have a cohesive body of work that can still present a feeling of uniqueness on each image. I plan to keep adding to this body of work in the future.
Since this initial concept I have expanded my scope to include buildings from outside of this region and also various found objects. I embrace the idea of experimentation and the challenge of seeing what I can create from what is often a very simple form.
Most of the montages that I have produced are extremely high resolution and can be printed at very large sizes showing excellent detail. I have in-house capabilities to make prints up to 2 feet across and whatever is the corresponding length. I print some of the montages in a 2 foot by 4 foot format or so. Of course the images can also be ordered in much larger sizes than this and in smaller sizes.
