Bio/Artist Statement
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Waco Moore © 2001 |
Roger Moore was born in a sod house in the Texas Panhandle where nothing
separated him from the North Pole but a barbed wire fence. At age five, he
was stolen by gypsies and sold to a circus. He spent the next five years
carrying water to the elephants and running errands for the tattooed man and
the painted lady whose bodies were colorful canvasses -- the original
stimulus for Roger's interest in art. After the circus got its big break and
went to Paris, Roger ran away to visit the Louvre. Overwhelmed by the
museum's fabulous artwork. Roger hid in the men's washroom and managed to
live in the Louvre for the next seven years where he studied many forms of
art and beauty. He subsisted on leftover food from the museum's bistro and
wore clothing left in unclaimed parcels. During this time he acquired his
first Hasselblad camera when a tipsy Swedish art thief, being pursued by
Interpol, stashed it along with twenty rolls of unexposed film and a
half-empty bottle of DuBonnet in stall number five. Roger's destiny was
sealed. After exposing all the film, he mustered his courage and left the
museum to find a one-hour film processor. The rest is history. His fame
grew. He made a fortune and spent it on photographic and computer equipment ...
the rich and the famous lined up to collect his photographic fine art. He sent money home to the tattooed man and the painted lady,
bought fancy peanuts for the elephants and everyone lived happily ever
after .. (At least, it could have been like that).
Who is
this Roger Moore ...
Really?
Perhaps, you should know something. In
all my years; I have ridden camels across the Thar Desert in India; pinstriped
hot rod cars; been Principal Investigator on two National Science Foundation
grants involving the design and use of what has now evolved into the Internet;
falsely impersonated the son of a famous Southern Baptist Minister; have
photographed a 1,900 year-old “house of ill repute” in Ephesus, Turkey, the city
of Antony and Cleopatra’s honeymoon; was the Information Systems Officer to the
Commanding General of the U S Army Medical Service Corp in Washington; at one
time thought a “duck-tail” haircut was “cool” (and actually wore one); have been
certified in both Neurolinguistic Programming and Eriksonian Hypnosis; have sold
life insurance door-to-door; have won trophies drag racing; have been married
more than four exquisite decades to an angel-on-earth; have taught basic
business skills to students at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania;
was the first American ever seen by many villagers near the Amur River in the
Russia Far East; have led photo expeditions into the Amazon jungle … and out
again; never smoked pot (so I do not have to claim that “I did not inhale”);
have negotiated the construction of hotels in Dubai and Sharja with an Arab
group composed of the Sheik of Kuwait and a Palestinian smuggler (they got the
best of that deal, by the way); played saxophone in a jazz band; wrecked every
car I ever owned when I was a teenager (and it was NEVER my fault … I promise);
have the most incredibly wonderful son any man could imagine; a sweet and
beautiful granddaughter named Jette (no middle name, just Jette Moore), have
taught computer modeling and simulation to students at Texas Tech University;
with native guides, have hunted the Spectacled Caiman (Caiman Crocodilus) in
canoes, before midnight, on the Rio Negro of Brazil; have photographed the
bowels of the medinas of ancient Moroccan cities; have designed and made
boomerangs; have raced motorcycles (and have the steel plates in my body to
prove it); have thrilled at the sensation of speed by windsurfing only inches
off the surface of the water; have written and published numerous scholarly
papers regarding the managerial economic issues of computer networking; have
fished for Piranha in the Amazon river; have not yet skydived; have fly fished
with my own hand-tied flies; have broken multiple bones in the false belief that
I could be a martial arts master; have endured (and still do endure) the
surgical fusion of three of my vertebrae; have made erotic nude photographs;
have made nude photographs which were not erotic; have written my last words
with the lead from the tip of a bullet when I believed I would not survive being
stranded with no food and no heat in a blizzard in the Colorado Rockies; have
fought mosquitoes in the Peruvian rain forest with the man who trained our
original 16 American Astronauts in jungle survival; have marveled at the
wonderfully muted colors and textures and stone and wood that 1,500 years of
life have molded into what we know as “Aya Sofia” in Istanbul; have had the
honor of holding the hands of both my Mother and my Father at their death beds
as they left this world; have the belief that I can become an accomplished
Japanese Sumi-e painter; have the honor of having people who seriously collect
my photographic works; have written poetry (and have the belief that I can learn
to express “negative space” in the form of Japanese Tanka poems); drove a 15
year-old rust-bucket Suburban with “blow-away-gray” paint simply because it fit
like an old shoe; have consumed gallons of honey-sweetened tea while haggling
with Kilim peddlers, incense hustlers, and turban-fabric hawkers in such places
as Marrakech, Casablanca, Fez, and Mekness; have pumped gas and fixed flats in a
service station (back when there really was service) until I graduated from high
school; was fired from a high-level corporate management position (apparently
the Chairman of The Board didn’t understand who I thought I was); survived a
tasting of “Siete Raices” (7-Roots), know as ‘jungle viagra’ served to me by a
native Shaman in the Peruvian Amazon; lost my heart to the beauty and humanity
of the people of the Russia Far East; was the best “bait caster” in thirteen
states when in the Boy Scouts; was an international wheeler-dealer dealmaker
during the boom days of real estate in the ‘80’s (and have lived to tell about
it); have been on more diets than I can count; find Taoism intriguingly
interesting; have always believed that every woman is attractive in some way;
still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up; and so on … and so on …
But, I think you get the picture. I have
been “down the river” a few times in my life, and who would have thought that
after all of that, I would still have so much to learn? One of the
more important things I have discovered in this wonderful and varied life of
mine is that the things that have been most important to me have come as a
by-product of something I have done for someone else. And, furthermore, the
more the other person feels what I have done for them was important to them, the
greater my personal pleasure.
(c) 2005 Roger Moore All Rights Reserved
Some people have described Roger as follows:
Perhaps it's to be expected that some of Roger Moore's memorable images are double exposures. After all, he has lead a dual life. As a successful financial consultant with Merrill Lynch, his many years of experience in the quantitative world of business and finance were brought to bear investing and managing money. However, this largely left-brained activity has been balanced by an equal interest and talent in photography.
While Roger's business career developed as a result of his B.B.A. and M.B.A. degrees from Texas Tech University, his Ph.D. work at the Wharton School (University of Pa.), and his experience as a university professor and management consultant, it is photography which has provided his right-brained creative outlet. This versatile Dallas-based photographer is as at home with his Horseman 4x5, his Hasselblad, his Noblex panoramic, or his digital imaging system, as he is with sophisticated financial products.
Roger left the financial world in full-time pursuit of his passion for fine art and commercial photography. Roger first set foot in a darkroom when he was a military officer at the Pentagon in 1967. Now Roger is as comfortable in his "digital darkroom" as he is in his "chemical darkroom." Over the years, he has continued to develop his "photographic eye" through scores of workshops, seminars and personal study. He has studied at the Nikon School and Hasselblad University. In 1994 and 1996, Roger studied fine art photography with Joyce Tenneson, the respected New York photographic artist, and in 1995, he studied with Greg Gorman, the famous LA commercial photographer. His photographic printing skills (chemical darkroom) have been refined through personal study and through hands-on experience with Howard Bond, and John Sexton, both of whom are
world-renowned fine art photographers and masters of the craft.
Many people who know and love Roger's work refer to him as an artist. Roger's
photographic images are fresh and imaginative and his digital imaging creations
are innovative and unique. It has been said that Roger is a master
at "catching Mother Nature showing off."
Artist's Statement:
When people hear that I am a
photographer, the most common question I hear is: “Oh, you take pictures?” To
that question, my answer must be: “No, I don’t take pictures.”
I
don’t "take" anything …………… I "make" photographs. To be more precise, I record
my reactions to the scene before me at a particular moment in time. Then, after
my film has been developed and scanned, I further modify the representation of
my reactions in my digital darkroom. Every image I create is an amalgam of my
vision and my feelings, applied repeatedly over a period of time in a variety of
circumstances. My images are not intended to document or represent that which
can be seen by one’s naked eye … the finished images are my personal
expression. To know my work is to know me.
I just make them, I don’t explain
them …
(c) 2003 Roger Moore All Rights Reserved
Roger's photographic art is currently on
exhibit, or has been exhibited
in the following venues:
Studio 105 --
Dallas, TX
The Dallas Museum of Natural History --
Dallas, Texas
The Heard Natural Science Museum and Wildlife Sanctuary --
McKinney, TX
The International Cultural Center at Texas Tech University --
Lubbock, TX
The Gallery at South Side on Lamar--
Dallas, TX
Focus Photographic Gallery --
Carmel, CA
Montana Studio --
Santa Monica, CA
Linden Gallery at Bergamot Station --
Santa Monica, CA
Coupralux Gallery --
Dallas, TX
Beaudry Gallery --
Dallas, TX
The Karen Mitchell Frank Gallery --
Dallas, TX
The Quorum Gallery --
Addison, TX
The Colonnade --
Addison, TX
Trammell Crow Center —
Dallas, TX
Milo's Fine Art Gallery—
Dallas, TX
Art Works Gallery —
Richardson, TX
The Dallas Arboretum —
Dallas, TX
Kathleen's Art Cafe —
Dallas, TX
Red Dot Space —
San Antonio, TX
Palo Duro Canyon
Interpretive Center --
Canyon, TX
Untitled: A Gallery —
Amarillo, TX
The Archive Gallery —
Amarillo, TX
Renaissance Art Studio —
Lubbock, TX
Ken Young Studio —
Lubbock, TX
The Old School House Art Center --
Qualicum Beach, BC, Canada
Project X: Studio & Theater--
Dallas, TX
Roger's photographic art is in the following
corporate collections
(as well as numerable Private Collections)
The Institute For Luxury Home Marketing --
Dallas, TX
The Brookings Institution —
Washington, DC
GTE Corporation —
Dallas, TX
Northern Telecom —
Los Colinas, TX
Real Trends Inc. —
Dallas, TX
Service Asset Management Co --
Dallas, TX
The Promotion Network —
New York City
Fidelity Investments —
Dallas, TX
Spectra Communications —
Dallas, TX
South Side on Lamar --
Dallas, TX
UBS-Paine Webber --
Dallas, TX
Richard Wright Architects --
Dallas, TX
A. G. Edwards & Sons --
Dallas, TX
RealtyUSA --
Orchard Park, NY
Century 21 - Bob Capes Realtors --
Columbia, SC
Coast River Environmental --
Vancouver, BC, Canada
William E. Woods & Co --
Virginia Beach, VA
Walking Angel Records --
Dallas, TX
