Headshot Photography
From the time he was a child in Vietnam, Tommy Wu has been obsessed by the visual arts. Starting at age 6, he began to paint with watercolors borrowed from an older sister. In his pre-teen years, Tommy became intensely interested in movies and the practice of painting movie posters (water soluble paints on canvas, with the canvas cleaned and repainted over and over again.)
After moving to the USA, Tommy advanced his formal education, which had begun with an apprenticeship in Vietnam under the tutelage of a portrait artist, by taking life drawing classes at a nearby community college. However, when his high school years ended and a career direction was needed, Tommy put his artistic tools and practice aside and he began the study of engineering, a discipline more acceptable to his family. His artistic vision never left him though. It remained quiescent until about four years ago.
Tommy felt the magnetic pull back into an artistic life and he again attended life-drawing classes. He also found himself reawakened to a previous life-long habit of picture taking. Formerly utilized in a practical fashion - snap shots of family and friends and recording and documenting events- this time his photography became a tool to represent his inner vision. The availability of powerful photographic software such as Photoshop and his technical background allowed him to synergies these two aspects of himself (engineering and art) into a cohesive visual whole. Tommy could see how his desire to use the camera to express himself could be enhanced with the control modern imaging software offered him. His passion for photography was reborn.
Tommy is un-conflicted by the long-time and seemingly insolvable artistic conundrum - Is photography really a fully realized art form? Tommy sees himself as a photographer and artist, period. His purpose is to create images that provide the viewer the opportunity to experience the subject of his images exactly the way Tommy experienced them at the creative moment. It could be a sense of experienced beauty and proportion - pleasing and graceful, or a moment of sudden alertness to the graphics of form and structure. Whatever the content, Tommy uses it to elaborate and showcase his clean and minimalist style.
In someone who cannot imagine his life without photography, Tommy is compelled to photograph as an act of love. Thus he engages in actions which reveal to the artist his own vulnerabilities and insecurities. He increases that vulnerability when he shares it with the world through his images. However, Tommy has said, "I have chosen to listen to my heart". Let us listen with him.
Tim Tomasi, MD
Friend, Poet & Photographer
April 2002