Alan Sockloff Biography:
To summarize, I was born in New York City, raised in Coral Gables, educated in Atlanta,and employed in Philadelphia. While thriving as a professor of Quantitative Psychology at Temple University, it was my passion for photography that led to my early retirement, thereby allowing me to devote more time to my art. So, I retired in Brunswick ME and again in Greencastle, IN.
As the son of an amateur photographer who believed portraits were his specialty, my sisters and I spent our early childhoods subjected to numerous photo sessions with a well-worn brown blanket for a backdrop and our eyes blinded by 500W bright lights. Despite this inauspicious beginning, I did develop an interest in photography, starting at age 10 and using my Kodak Pony 35 to record family travels and good times with friends.
Years later, I married my dear wife Carol and somehow ended up with a blended family of four children. And, as you would expect, I became the family photographer, tracking our travels, significant life events, and even silly portraits. In 1990, around the time our oldest children were headed off to college, I was re-engaging with my passion for photography, taking basic darkroom courses with Bruce Katsiff at a local junior college in order to develop my skill in printing silver gel black & white photos. Years later, my printing skills improvedafter having studied black & white printing with John Sexton at Anderson Ranch Art Center and George Tice, as well as alternative process printing with Christopher James and Brenton Hamilton, the latter three at Maine Media Workshops. Over the years, I have exhibited my works in group and solo shows mainly in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maine. Three museums hold some of my photos: University of New England, James A. Michener Art Museum, and Bowdoin College Art Museum. The latter two each have in their collections several my scrap metal photos.
Specializing in both wet darkroom black & white as well as alternative processes printing, my preferred subjects have been diverse, varying from abstract patterns of scrap metal and dynamic water flow to travel photography and land- and waterscapes to still lifes of aging flowers. My interest in abstract patterns stems from my fascination with the results of random processes: lines & curves, texture, shading, and the forms that are created. These quasi-magical forms are particularly interesting to me when they take on partially recognizable, although not always obvious, shapes.
The SCRAP YARD series, shown here, began in 1997 when I visited my brother-in-law’s scrap yard in Philadelphia (S.D. Richman Sons) and found metals of many varieties, shapes, and arrangements, either lying on the ground in piles (bushelings) or in stacked crushed bales waiting to be shipped. The abstract forms created by the arrangements seemed both random and magical. I could see in the scrap exactly what I had been seeking in my other photography, and I spent the next few years photographing there.