Artist Biography Michael Fain grew up in Chicago and attended the University of Chicago. He worked for over twenty years as an optical and mechanical engineer in Chicago, and in high-tech companies in Maryland, Colorado, and Canada. In 1980 he began a fiction writing collaboration with his wife, Judith Barnard, that has resulted in the publication of eleven novels under the name "Judith Michael."
Michael Fain has been a photographer for over fifty years, with photographs published in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine, Chicago Magazine, and scientific journals. In 2000 he began studying digital imaging.
Artist Statement
The sophistication of digital imaging has opened new horizons for me over the past few years. As a photographer for many years I was especially intrigued by the emotions that could be elicited in viewers by using a full range of tones in black and white photographs. Now, by using digital imaging techniques, I am able to explore the use of tones, contrast, detail, montage, and duplication to a degree that was not previously feasible. Photography can never completely "capture" an image in the same ways as the human eye, because of the limitations of camera and film. Since a photographic print, however carefully executed, is only an approximation of the original image, I am willing to greatly increase the range of that approximation by the use of digital imaging techniques so that my printed images reflect my imagination, as well as emotions that were stimulated by the subject matter.