ABOUT
Stephen Sharf is a 70 year old award winning photographer from Toronto Ontario. Sharf became interested in photography at the age of 7 and by 12 years of age he beacame proficient in darkroom work. He was self taught. Stephen went on to film making and at age 16 won the U.S.A. National Young Peoples Film Festival Best Film Award for Ontario and Western New York State. He later went on to study Film at York University, graduating with an Honours Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Film in 1979.
Sharf has concentrated on Black and White Street Photography for most of his photographic career, however he has worked in a number of photographic fields, which have included everything from commercial assignments and wedding photography, to photojournalism. His work has appeared on magazine covers, in commercial showrooms, sales offices, private and public exhibitions and in collections in Canada the USA and in Europe. In 1986 Sharf's work was chosen by jury for selection in the prestigeous Exhibition of Fine Photography at Toronto's Okeefe Center, an exhibition that included many of the worlds top Photographers for the benefit of Canadas National Ballet.
In addition to creating photographs, Sharf has lectured on photography and has taught courses in advanced darkroom technique for Toronto's Adult Contining Education Program in the 1990's, and he has contributed commentary to various web based photography venues and newspapers. During this period in the 1990's Sharf, also an accomplished Jazz drummer, was studying Jazz under the tutalage of world reknown Jazz teacher Jim Blackley. Due to these intense studies, and his performances around Toronto during this period, Stephen was producing less printed photographs and continued at this reduced production for a time. Today his production of fine art prints is as prolific as in his earlier years.
For many years Sharf relied on a large collection of classic and antique cameras, including many medium and large format film cameras for much of his street work. Some of his early shows were shot entirely with two of his classics; the Rolleiflex F Twin lens medium format camera and the 1957 Crown Graphic large format camera. His current work is shot almost exclusively with a Leica M Monochrom camera, a digital camera that photographs only Black and White images. Stephen occasionally records Monochrome images on his IPhone, and has produced some of his most interesting photographs with it.
Sharf processes his work from start to finish to the highest standards with strict museum level archival processing on acid free rag and fiber based mediums with superb pigments-only digital processing. His work is totally self controlled at every stage and produced in studio. Rare amongst modern photographers, Sharf goes on and finishes his works in studio by mounting and matt cutting each image to exacting standards, as was practiced by only but a few of the classic photographers of the past.
A typical completed Stephen Sharf photograph is beautiful and deeply rich, exhibiting an astoundingly broad tonal range and expression. These photographs are works of fine art by a Toronto master photographer that make an exceptional addition to any art collection.