Michael Boruch



D. Pollack & Sons, 1974



Hall Tree, 1973



St. Prokopius’ Sacristy, 1975

Photographs are Chromogenic Prints (C-Prints) made from 8 x 10 Ektacolor Negatives. They are printed on 11x14 Kodak color paper. The actual image sizes are approximately 10" x 13."

Statements on the Medium

My interest in photography lies in how it empowers the maker to explain and organize the chaos of daily existence. Regardless if whatever else a photograph can do (how or what it communicates to others) its fundamental mission is to teach the photographer.

But when we as audience appreciate any great photograph, on a parallel track we also share in the photographer's personal enlightenment and better understand the power of this medium.
All Art does this. Photography (specifically ‘straight’ photograph) does this within the more narrowed focus of literalness; a medium vacant of the baggage that both enriches and encumbers the other arts. Expressive revelation can be achieved through the juxtapositions of real things whether found of constructed.

But art photography's scope cannot be limited strictly to literal interpretations. Its ambitions are greater and a photo curriculum must reflect other directions in photographic expression. Images transformed through collage, overlays, optical and chemical effects, integrations with the printed word have been with us since the 1920’s. Trends in post-modernism and constructed images vie with tendencies toward a neo-pictorialism but still the literal representation remains the medium’s fundamental starting point.

On the Marriage of Camera and the Darkroom…..

The most important concept a teacher of photography can impart is the integration of the seeing, taking and crafting of images. Being a photographer is ridiculously easy and excruciatingly difficult. A photographer is someone who combines the observational soul of a poet, the analytical mind of a scientist and the compositional skills of an artist. (Many would enlist all three under the term ‘Artist’. But because of the often highly technical nature of the medium, separating the skills-as roles to be played-is helpful.)

Taking Pictures or ‘image capture’ (making negatives or files) is a Creative Event.
Committing to Paper or ‘outputting the files’ (printing in the darkroom or by ink-jet) can be (and should be) an Interpretive Event ...... and is in every way a part of the Artistic Process.

Taking pictures with a camera can be compared to composing music. What the photographer creates, the photographic negative, is analogous to a musical score. Photons of light activate the silver grains on the negative, which make up the image. The photographer arranges photos like the composer arranges the notes on a page. And like any musical score, the negative is a cold and dead thing until realized by the interpretive art of the performer-the darkroom printer.

In music the composer and the performing musician can both be worthy of the name artist. Likewise so can the photographer and the printer. In this class you will assume both roles. The line between them will continue to blur as each interacts and strengthens the other. We compose music through our cameras. Our concert hall is the darkroom (later, PhotoShopTM) Two sides, One coin.

Vita- Michael Boruch

Fine Artist / Commercial Photographer / Educator

Education: Graduate Studies
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
MFA in Photography 1974

Undergraduate Studies in Applied Music and Music Education
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 1968-71

Solo Exhibitions: Dittmer Gallery, Northwestern University; Evanston, IL 1973
Reicher Gallery, Barat College; Lake Forest, IL 1974 and 1994
Photoworks Gallery; Chicago, IL 1978

Group Exhibitions: Fellowship Exhibition; Gonzalas Hall, Art Institute of Chicago, 1974

Photography as a Fine Art; a traveling exhibition of the US Information Agency, 1973-75

New Acquisitions; Photography Gallery, Art Institute of Chicago, 1976

The Grant Park Project; Museum of Contemporary Photography at
Columbia College Chicago, 1990

Collections: Art Institute of Chicago
Museum of Modern Art; NY, NY
Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago
Many Private Collectors

Teaching: Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts
DePaul University; Chicago, IL 2005 to the present

Assistant Professor of Art
Barat College; Lake Forest, IL 1974-2004

Adjunct Professor of Art
Oakton Community College; Des Plaines, IL 1980, and 1994-present