Richard Silver
Photo by Christian Hoiberg
Over the years, friends and family have become accustomed to seeing Richard Silver, currently a year-round resident of Montauk, behind a camera. Whether it’s an everyday gathering of friends, a special occasion or a vibrant sunset, Rich can be found shooting, often juggling between a few different cameras—most recently, his Nikon D750, Fujifilm XE-2, and his iPhone. He photographs a range of subjects, concentrating on the natural world, especially the more rugged aspects, extreme weather, or changing light, with many of his shots taken at night or in low light. He is especially attracted to the organically dramatic—the ephemeral beauty of sky and water seeming to meld together at certain times of day, the starkness of ragged mountainous terrain, the quiet appeal of something ordinary when it’s shrouded in fog or bathed in extraordinary sunlight. His signature style tends toward vertical orientation, strong colors, good contrast, deep or dark tonalities, and strong, simple compositions, mostly shot with a wide-angle lens.
Rich is constantly drawn outside, no matter the time of year or the weather conditions. He’s the opposite of a fair-weather outdoorsman, who loves to surf year round. He has skied many regions of the Alps, going off piste to find untouched terrain. His travels have taken him to many other locales – both exotic and familiar – such as Antarctica, Iceland, northern Norway, Japan, Southeast Asia, British Columbia, Africa, South America and even Adak, a remote Aleutian island in Alaska. His close connection to the landscape has led to an active interest in the environment, especially in preserving Montauk’s natural beauty and resources.
Rich recalls being drawn to the camera from an early age. His parents, who were both amateur but passionate visual artists—his father a ceramicist with his own basement studio and his mother a prolific painter—instilled in him an appreciation of a variety of artistic mediums. In his thirties, Rich picked up a video camera and shot his friends’ events, documenting life as it happened. But even as video camera sizes shrunk and became much more portable, he returned to still photography, finding something pristine and special about capturing a singular moment in a singular place through the lens of his camera.
From July 8th to July 27th 2021, Rich, along with other local artists, exhibited work for ELEMENTAL at Stick + Stone Gallery in Amagansett, NY. Curator and local artist Aynsley Schopfer states that, “each of the 20 participating artists reveals a reverence for our natural world on the the East End. The art on exhibition is an homage to nature’s elements and the elementals, and in turn each artist is also an element, a primary part of the East End art community”. For this exhibition, Rich has included images from Ditch Plains beach in Montauk.
Other public showings of his work were at Stick + Stone Gallery February 14th to March 15th 2020 and Amagansett Lifesaving Station museum August 11th to October 15th 2019, and Stick + Stone Gallery in June 2019, as well as the Depot Art Gallery in Montauk in August 2018, August 2017, and September 2014.
Rich’s work was also recently selected for inclusion in the following juried exhibitions: “The Magic of Light” March 3rd to 24th 2022, “Composed” May 28th to June 18th 2021 and “In Celebration of Trees” June 25th to July 16th 2021, both exhibitions at Photoplace Gallery, as well as “Critters!” at New Orleans Photo Alliance.
