Biography

I was born in 1941.

All my training in the arts has been in literature and poetry. I received my undergraduate education in Antioch and Guilford colleges, and I have an MA in English from the University of Iowa and an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, both in 1972. I was an English professor for ten years.

I am entirely self-taught in the visual arts. I had my first, rudimentary darkroom at age 13, and I photographed avidly from my early twenties into my mid-thirties. I began printing my own work while working in a photo reproduction studio in San Francisco. I followed the fashion of 20th Century Modernist photography by focusing on the world outside myself and searching for the luminous. As Minor White expressed it, I photographed “things for what they are and what else they are.” In my mid-thirties I realized I had reached the end of my interest and stopped shooting almost entirely.

After a twenty-five year absence, I returned to photography at age 60. I deliberately steered away from Modernism and the principles advocated by Stieglitz and his successors, which I believe has devolved into a precious and fastidious approach largely devoid of its early power. Instead, I turned for inspiration to artists like Luis González Palma, Josephine Sacabo, and Loretta Lux, all of whom drive toward Mystery beyond the content of the image.

I am a native of Tennessee and have lived in Knoxville for thirty years.

David Habercom
1419-D Kenesaw Avenue
Knoxville, TN 37919

(865) 256-5833