Sandra Kaplan's gift with her cameras, consistently sui generis, has evolved for 40 years and continues to dance on a daring precipice of light, shade, and color that dazzles, excites, provokes, and inspires. Her peerless knowledge and love affair with the camera allows her to go where others fear to tread with experimentation. She will tell you it has been a long and resplendent journey, beginning in Paris, France in 1970 as a high fashion photographer covering the major fashion houses of Europe. This led her to the major motion picture industry, Columbia, Warner Bros. and Paramount, photographing some of the biggest stars, producers and directors of the era. Many of her photographs remain the timeless images of Hollywood's most famous. She says of her portrait photography, "I never set out to simply take a photo, creating a photograph is my mission." In 1996 Kaplan took her journey and expertise to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado seeking freedom to experiment with life beyond human. Her cameras became her paintbrushes and the results expectations. Her shows in Colorado and New York have made her work sought after by collectors. The natural evolution of a gift such as hers is to share and to teach, which she is now doing part time at the Red Brick Center for the Arts, an Associate of Aspen Art Museum, and Colorado Mountain College, as well as in Door County, Wisconsin. Of teaching she confesses, "It is the most excitement I've ever known watching students come to life, coming to love the camera, learning what it can do." Artist's Statement As an artist, as a photographer, I am always reaching for something new, something different. Not for the sake of being different, but instead, for the sake of discovery. Photography is an adventure, and an adventure is always thrilling. And that's me; I'm always searching, reaching, growing…….. Come along, join me on my journey ! The work on hand-made papers is just one part of my journey. These papers come from all over the world. Some are created right here in the United States, other from far-flung parts of the globe. Some even come from women's collectives. I also work on other surfaces, including, canvas, photographic papers of all kinds, aluminum sheeting, and whatever else sparks me. It's an exciting journey, a difficult one, an enriching one, a challenging one. The beginning of my search, my challenge, is to find just the right surface for the right image. Not all images "speak" to hand-made paper. Then, the images speak. They tell me how to shoot them, under what conditions, what kind of light. They touch my heart and my soul. That's the way it works for me. It's very specific and organic. I don't think about what I'm doing, it's all second nature. It's happening between thoughts, or in that space of "no thought". When I let go, the photo is made, when I step back and get out of the way, the photo finds itself.