history : fotoplay

The inspiration for the Fotoplay/PhotoPlay idea was years of fascination with children’s drawings, and two Percent-for-Art commissions which I created ten years ago. Combining my photographs with children’s drawings, I created large photographic prints, first for the Denver Family Crisis Center, and then for the Captain Albert Stevens School.

I visited elementary school classrooms, and invited kids to draw. I also had drawing parties at my house for my young son and his friends. While they drew, I sat by and watched. Watching so many kids draw, the idea for the Fotoplay Book began to evolve…

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As an artist-in-residence at a local preschool, I gave my photographs to kids, so they could draw on or around them. This led to a focus on creating photo-based pages that were really like “prompts.” I spent years creating the Fotoplay Book, testing pages on kids, designing and redesigning, watching carefully to see what was most interesting and exciting.

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Created in the spring of 2011, Fotoplay was the first-of-its-kind photo-based prompt book; it was self-published in March of 2012. Fotoplay went on to a second printing in June of 2012, and sold out quickly thereafter. In October of 2012, I signed a contract with Chronicle Books for a brand new, expanded edition of PhotoPlay!, published in the Spring of 2014