ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER - PAGE 1

Eric Thome grew up outside Baltimore, Maryland. Some factors that later influenced his interest in art, architecture, history and nature began early. His field trips to Baltimore's art museums, the National Aquarium, museums and sites in Washington D.C., and historic Philadelphia started in elementary school.

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Although history and museums were not always the most fun for Eric, family trips from childhood exposed him to Fort McHenry, the USS Constellation and historic ships in the Inner Harbor, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum, Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum, Babe Ruth Birthplace Museum, plus Jamestown, Williamsburg, Monticello, Mount Vernon and other historic American locations.

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In retrospect, the architectural styles of the past also influenced Eric with visits to the repurposed Pratt Street Power Plant in the Inner Harbor and the opening of Oriole Park at Camden Yards due to its incorporation of the B&O Railroad Warehouse, constructed from 1899 to 1905). Baltimore has done a great job of adaptive reuse rather than demolishing some of its historic buildings, even saving front facades after fires destroyed structures.

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By fifteen, Eric was having a wild time with friends in gritty Baltimore, Washington D.C. and other cities. In hindsight, Eric credits these misspent years as formative to his stylistic interest in historic architecture in a state of decay or ruins.

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In 10th grade, Eric's family moved outside Wilmington, Delaware, where he completed high school, but Eric spent almost every weekend in Baltimore with his girlfriends and friends. Upon reminiscing, he remembers the sense of personal discovery when coming across historic industrial buildings and architectural ruins in nature rather than the urban environment. Eric recognizes these memories of Delaware as helping to cultivate his future interest in exploring old Western ghost towns.

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With the guidance of his parents, Eric applied to Maryland Institute College of Art. His mother had received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from MICA, and she was able to help Eric prepare his portfolio based on her understanding of what one of the leading fine-art universities would be looking for in applicants' work.

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Eric was accepted into MICA in 1999 on his own accord, but he was required to take summer classes before his first year to meet their standards. As a Graphic Design major, the Foundation (first) year also required art history, sculpture, color theory, drawing, and painting classes.

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Attending classes within Maryland Institute College of Art's main building and the repurposed B&O Railroad's Mount Royal Station also impacted Eric's love of historic architecture. There are too many locations with historic ambiance that Eric absorbed during his experiences in Baltimore to mention and many that he didn't get to photograph on his brief returns in 2015 and 2016 (when he only took a few photos after returning to see the Baltimore Museum of Art). Still, he hopes to photograph some in the future if they aren't already gentrified.

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In June 2000, Eric moved to Portland, Oregon, and transferred to the Pacific Northwest College of Art. After a graphic design internship during his junior year at PNCA, Eric changed his major to Inter-Media Art (taking printmaking, photography, and video classes).

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Eric started with black-and-white photography courses in the darkroom at PNCA. His first camera was a Ricoh 35mm film camera from a pawn shop (the recommended place from his teacher to get a cheap used camera), which he used while at PNCA.

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Eric's change in artistic direction followed a near-death experience in 2003 and a long-term recovery, ultimately leading him to move from the city to the high desert and mountains of Central Oregon. From Bend, Oregon, Eric traveled in all directions to photograph locations of interest to him in the varied terrains around Oregon.

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This borax vat, one of two left, was operated by Chinese workers at Borax Lake from 1898 to 1904

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Eric has been interested in Native American cultures, arts and activism since his teenage years. Before visiting ghost towns, Eric drove through the Umatilla Indian Reservation on a 2002 trip to the East Coast; the following year, after buying an Oregon travel atlas, he began driving across the Cascade Mountains and through the Columbia River Gorge from Portland to the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. These were the beginnings of Eric's solo journeys around the American West.

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All material on this website belongs to the author and copyright holder, Eric T. Thome of Occidental Photography LLC, unless otherwise noted. Copyrighted original material includes content, photographs, text and the Occidental Photography logo (registered with the United States Patent & Trademark Office).