Edward Fausty is a lifelong photographer. Trained in documentary style at the Yale School of Art and Cooper Union School of Art, he has always attempted to either go beyond or to undermine the traditional marriage between documentary and photography. His heart is in ink and paper, and he has worked hard to develop ways to celebrate this. In the 1990’s, he researched and resurrected the 19th century collotype photomechanical print. Now he is refining the fine art inkjet print. The following is a more complete Artist’s Statement for my series Refuge: My habit of entering the woods with camera became compulsive during the pandemic. It lasted longer and went deeper than it might otherwise have gone. At times the harshness from the outside crept into the imagery. And my clear favorite was the bleak winter landscape. But at a certain point it had to become something else. I began exploring what I could do with the Arches Text paper I so love to print on. Forming it into a folio/open book form felt good. It accentuated the act of entering the woods, or being welcomed into a literary adventure.This simple folding of the print is a nod to the art of the book. But the folio needed to be anchored to something. I began to sew the folio to a neutral museum board. But after many repetitions, I felt I needed more than just a single woodland image. I began sewing folios to larger versions of the same image. But when I thought about the act of taking refuge, the next step was to consider from what I was taking refuge; hence the beginnings of placing printed patterns of Covid over the backing board. I gradually allowed it to compete more forcefully with the front image, and to assume the form of conventional photography of other current challenges. I began to avail myself of public and stock photographs, as well as my own photographs made just prior to the pandemic. My refuge became complicated.