Rolfe Horn

Rolfe Horn was born in Walnut Creek, California in 1971. His fascination with photography began as a child when he used his father’s camera to capture memories of hikes around the trails of the East Bay and Lake Tahoe. His passion for photography blossomed in high school, when he enrolled in his first photography class. Within a couple of months, he constructed a darkroom in his father’s workshop, where he spent much of his free time. This passion earned him several first place awards for images of Yosemite Valley and the Mt. Diablo area. His High School graduation honors include Awards for Excellence in photography. Rolfe received his Associate of Arts degree from Diablo Valley College in 1993. During his years as a student, he worked as an assistant to Don Corning, a commercial photographer, where he learned a great deal about the zone system, as well as printing techniques. Rolfe studied landscape photography with Mark Citret, an associate of Ansel Adams, prior to entering Brooks Institute of Photograph, in Santa Barbara, California, in 1993. While a student at Brooks Institute, he studied with Nick Dekker, who introduced him to alternative processes and pushed him to create powerful images. He received multiple awards for his black and white photographs of the California landscape and recognition for pioneering interactive digital photography. When Rolfe received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Brooks Institute in the fall of 1996, he was named as the most outstanding graduate of his class and presented with a plaque in recognition of his accumulated achievements in landscape and digital photography. After graduation, Rolfe moved to Marin County, where he continued his love for landscape photography while pursuing a career in digital advertising photography. He began looking more closely at landscapes, finding abstracts within them. As a Christmas gift in 1997, Rolfe received a book by photographer Michael Kenna, which greatly impacted his perception about landscape photography. "Growing up on the West Coast, I always thought of fine art photography in terms of Ansel Adams, Morley Baer or John Sexton. Even though I had made many images of interesting urban scenes, structures, and nocturnes, I never thought of these types of images in terms of art, that is until I witnessed the images of Mr. Kenna." Rolfe met Michael Kenna a short time later and has been assisting Mr. Kenna since then. At that time, Rolfe decided to give up the advertising career, work with Mr. Kenna, and pursue a fine-art career. Rolfe continues to live and work as an artist and photographer in the Bay Area. His passion for the art is stronger than ever, yet his focus has shifted toward a more surrealist interpretation of the landscape. Rolfe's photographs have been shown in numerous exhibitions since 1989 and is held in many private and public collections such as the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

Rolfe Horn Images:
Shoreline, Mendocino Coast, CA
Sunset, Oki Island, Japan
Two Branched Pine, Nakano Umi, Japan