Our cover this month, featuring artist Andrew Pinkham's digital illustration of a nurse about to enter a new technologic world, celebrates the launch of our new Web site-http://ajnonline.com.
Born in 1963, Pinkham grew up amid the farms of Chester County, Pennsylvania, and images of animals frequently appear in his work. After discovering his passion for photography in 1981, he studied at Pennsylvania's Antonelli Institute and learned his trade as a photo assistant, photographing everything from weddings to waste treatment plants.
He describes his work as "folk art produced in a modern way." Typically, he photographs his subjects on location and uses the graphics editing program Photoshop "to set the color and mood. Sometimes, I'll add a tree or the sky to an image, but I try to keep it close to real life."
A year and a half ago, he began photographing animals in earnest. On this page is the 2007 portrait of his greyhound rescue dog, Suky, the first of his animal studies and the one that suggested to Pinkham that he was "onto something."
"The animal portraits I've done so far symbolize the truly unconditional love and admiration we have for the animals in our lives," he says. "In a way, the images immortalize them. With my portraits I create history, even if the photographs were only taken yesterday."
For more of Pinkham's work, go to http://www.andrewpinkham.com. And for more of AJN's new virtual world, go to http://ajnonline.com.
Alison Bulman, senior editorial coordinator