Richard Sidman - Born in Cambridge, Massachusettes; raised in Hollywood, Florida; grew up in Memphis, Tennessee - and now resides and creates in St. Petersburg, Florida.

With no academic or formal training, photography as a passion and art form evolved from an encounter in 1965 when a fellow student revealed 'interesting' images of girls he'd photographed; an epiphany for Sidman. The interaction of creative sensibility with circumstance ignited photography as a method of visual expression. The camera in '65 and daughter in '69 became integral in defining Sidman's life and future.

EYE Photography was created in early 1970. And while photographing the counter culture in 1971, Sidman slipped a camera into a Cat Stevens show. Revealing the pictures to a 'receptive' promoter led to photographing (mostly surreptitiously) rock&roll and 'the scene'. This resulted in a serious collection of 35mm, black&white, 'never before revealed' , vintage rock&roll photographs - shot in available (often low) light, personally and archivally processed, indexed, and currently stored as negatives. To this day, these pictures still have never been seen (some images, some friends and some family notwithstanding.)

A modest 6 week photo show in 1979 at the Brooks Gallery in Memphis, Tennessee titled Looking Around, presented eighty eight black&white prints. These selected images from the non-rock&roll genre of Sidman's catalogue of thousands of images, highlighted moments mainly from the Mid-South counter culture. Currently, as with the rock&roll pictures, these images also remain archived as negatives and unseen.

In the 1980's in St Petersburg, Florida, wet-finger photography waned at the same time Sidman's sphere of interests contracted, and as 'traditional' darkroom photography began it's metamorphosis into a more digital predominance. Simultaneously, professional demands began to occupy more of Sidman's time. Then late in the '90s, while painting, drawing and poetry evolved, it took mother and brother to 'force' a digital camera into his hands reigniting Sidman's passion for photography. It was then daughter's insistance for Sidman to get it together - to get the images out to the public to be seen.

Like the two or three 35mm film cameras Sidman always carried in the past, the digital camera goes EVERYWHERE Sidman goes. He captures digital visions at any moment: to later use as pieces to a larger puzzle, or to extrapolate into hard copy for the rest of us to enjoy as arresting images or to interpret for some deeper statement................ or just shake our collective heads and wonder. Pictures Sidman captures today, like images in the past, mostly are instantaneous and are mostly moments neither posed nor contrived. And like the 60's and 70's, the subject is light and where it comes from, or whomever or whatever it bounces off of - or doesn't. The results present a cerebral potpourri of interesting, original and dynamic visions of an EYE able to focus on more than what's seen.