Mike Potts/ Black & White Photography

Mike grew up in Pennsylvania and in 2005 moved to Arizona where he’s rarely cold and doesn’t have to shovel snow. He graduated from Bucknell University with a major in English and a minor in Chemistry and still wonders what to do with them. He currently works as a nuclear medicine technologist mainly so he has someone to talk to. This lets him photograph on the side without having to live on ramen and sleep on friends’ couches, though he quite likes ramen and has slept on some very comfortable couches. The rest of his time is devoted to various cats. They don’t like ramen, but they do like couches. His ultimate dream would be to visit Mars (and ideally make the trip back too). Mike’s approach to photography is minimalist, which if you’ve seen his comic book collection seems like a complete lie. He prefers to work with the subject, his camera, and whatever light is available. It also means he doesn’t have to lug around a lot of extra equipment, which just sounds like work.

"Dreamtime" is my ongoing 2017-present collection of dreamlike underwater images that are meant to evoke feelings of sublime peace (that fine line where the conscious and subconscious meet), and the creative chaotic (where energy is released that fine line is broken and the potential becomes kinetic).  The sequence is meant to take the viewer from the surface of the conscious into the subconscious and back again, a descent into dark, sometimes nightmare-ish feelings, and reemergence into the light, much like a spiritual journey into the valley and back to the mountaintop.