2017 Artist-in-Residence Charles Lupica

Waring Ranch reflects a time when ranching was a way of life on the Arizona Strip.

NPS/2017 AiR Charles Lupica

How do you capture the essence of 1 million acres in a few images? How do you do it in Black and White? How do you do it in 10 days? That was the challenge put before me as the Spring 2017 Artist in residence at Grand Canyon - Parashant National Monument (Parashant). At first I simply went about creating my art but as I got to know the monument and its caretakers better, I gained a sense of purpose beyond just art. I felt a moving desire to blend art and the essence of Parashant.

After this revelation, I spent my days thinking about what Parashant is, what would best represent it. How could I, as a Black and White photographer, share the beauty and majesty of a place with alpine forests and desert plains, a place that appears mostly barren to the casual observer. Contemplating the essence of Parashant and how the essence of a place translates to art has forever changed me as an artist.

Charles Lupica is a photographer, mentor, author, photography studio owner. He has been taking photographs for as long as he can remember. In 2007 his life was twisting and turning around him, as life twists and turns around all of us. He was drifting on the currents of life. Then while bicycle touring across France, he rediscovered his love of photography. From that point on his childhood daydream of becoming a photographer became his passion. His story is a story of being mentored online; of receiving genuine peer to peer critique that helped him create a book, find a publisher, and in 2013 win a gold medal in the International Photographer Awards. Mr. Lupica feels every photograph is a moment in time that reflects who we are. He encourages others to look for the details that others have missed and to change the narrative.

Mr. Lupica loves to create cityscapes, desertscapes, and mountainscapes using long exposure to blend and warp wind, sand, and sky. He loves long exposure, HDR, on black, panoramas, macro, black and white photography. He says he is not a photographer, he is an artist with a camera. The art of photography is the art of learning to let go of reality.