Joseph O'Neill

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Joseph O’Neill

Artist Biography

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My journey started with my Grandmother, also an artist, who constantly encouraged me to be creative and explore the artist within me. Â I soon discovered the photographer Eugene Adget and his unique way of capturing the simplicities of everyday life. Â Also, Manray for showing me that photography is art.

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Although I have no formal art education in the art world, I did attend the Johnson and Wales University for Culinary Arts, and suspect the care and attention I learned to pay to food helped shape my appreciation of the beauty of the ordinary, day-to-day life. Also, because I am self-taught as a photographer, I am never afraid to explore, question and educate myself, to become more nuanced in capturing what I would like to share to the world.

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I have had the great fortune to not only participate in numerous photo expositions, but to have placed in a handful of them. Â The most recent result is that I have been invited to show my work in group shows at galleries throughout the New York Tri-borough Area.

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New York City has a reputation as the center of the universe, and most New Yorkers would have to agree.  But in my photographs, I steer away from the city’s razzle-dazzle, and look for the emptiness New Yorkers experience daily..  I pay attention to the small, often hidden things of city life.  When the light catches the corner of a building bordering the Hudson River, the loneliness of a child’s playground at night or an ornate bridge in Central Park; I seek beauty in these moments.

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In the editing process most pictures are of course discarded. Â But more beautiful discoveries take place well after the photo is shot. Â The process often makes me want to share more; the exposure, lighting, the innocence of subject that give the pictures their edge and make them unique.

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As native New Yorkers, we take for granted the nondescript objects, sight and sound that surround us.  But I try to latch on to these fleeting things, knowing their beauty will soon be lost in the real world.  I welcome you to experience what I see through the lens – the rare, raw magic that exists in my city.

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