As an artist, Mecham is compelled by something he believes
we all feel within us that is connected to something greater than
ourselves. It can be being out in nature and why people love the
forest. “I think it is just feeling that connection,” he shares. “I am
trying to express that feeling I get from a wide variety of things
that I am connected to through my heart and attempt to express
that through the photograph. There is a universal narrative about
the cosmos in it and everything we create, even ourselves; they
are all a manifestation of that on some level. It is very mysterious
and I don’t claim to understand it or know what it is but we are all
aware that there is something that connects us all.”
Mecham describes his work as having a painterly style, which
comes from the fact that he was more influenced by painters as
a child growing up than by photographers. He sees himself as
more of a painter with a camera. He says, “With many of my images
the concept is fixed in my mind as to what I want to achieve;
the composition is there. I always leave room for spontaneity and
surprises. I’m not very good at taking snapshots. Though I can
take advantage of spontaneity, there has to be some main idea of
what I am trying to achieve before I work on it or I burn up a lot of film and never
achieve anything.”
He approaches setting up architectural and figurative photographs differently.
Architectural pieces are obviously fixed subjects and Mecham explores whatever
structure he wants to photograph and tries to find the point that triggers a connection
to the inner self. It might be a certain angle or a certain point of view. “I
select each composition on how I am struck emotionally by a certain location,”
he states. “There is some kind of rhythm in form. I remember Joseph Campbell
talked about this in the ‘Power of Myth’. In the last episode about art, there is a
rhythm to form and shapes that will trigger something within our mind.
