Nathan Wirth, a native San Franciscan, is a self-learned photographer who uses a variety of techniques– including long exposure, infrared, and intentional camera movement– to express his unending wonder of the fundamental fact of existence. Wirth, who earned both his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in English Literature from San Francisco State University, brings a deep appreciation of poetry to his explorations of place (especially the sea). Poets such as George Oppen, James Schuyler, Seamus Heaney, Lorine Niedecker, Elizabeth Bishop, William Wordsworth, Robert Frost, and George Mackay Brown have played a fundamental role in shaping his attention to the things and places that he photographs. Often returning to the same locations many times, Wirth seeks to explore the silence and the sublimity of those places.
