Bio I’ve lived in Asheville most of my life, attending Asheville City Schools and Gibbons Hall, and graduated from Lee Edwards (now Asheville) High School. After spending two years at King College in Bristol, TN, I eventually earned a degree in English from UNC – Chapel Hill in 1973. I’m married to pianist and Suzuki teacher Suzanne Dixon. We have a son, Brion, who is a paramedic in Frisco, Colorado. My dad, Lindsay Dixon, hooked me on photography when we set up a darkroom in the bathroom in the early 1960s. Like so many before me, when I saw that sheet of paper become a photograph in the developer tray, I was hopelessly addicted. Although I set photography aside for other, less artistic passions through high school and most of college, it turned out that my addiction was only in remission for a while. I took a photography class my senior year of college, and found myself immediately under the spell of the safelights and chemicals again. After what might be called a checkered career in retail, I lucked into a job as a Staff Photographer at the Asheville Citizen-Times in 1983, where I still love going to work (almost) every day. A few years ago, Ed Gilreath of Weaverville, and old friend from my photo retail days, gave me his marvelous Arca-Swiss view camera shortly before his death. Ed’s generous gift encouraged me to get back under the focusing cloth, and back into the darkroom, where it all began. With news photography being entirely digital these days, it’s wonderful to work with film and paper again. The necessarily slow pace of photography with a view camera, and the single-tasking nature of the work, both in the field and in the darkroom, is a refreshing change from my daily work, and is almost a kind of meditation for me. There are no computers involved in the production of my black and white work. |
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photo by Bill Sanders