Ralph h. (zosimas) Sidway

Mr. Sidway began his practice of photography in his mid-teens and quickly ventured into freelance work, first in equine photography in both 35mm and medium-format, and soon expanding to other subject matter. His fine-art landscape photographs were first accepted into juried exhibits in 1983 and thereafter. In 1990 he began working also in large-format (4 x 5), his gelatin-silver prints being selected for regional exhibits from the Southeast to the Midwest, and regularly found in Louisville art fairs, galleries, and coffee shops. In 2000 some of his first digital photographs were selected for the Louisville Water Tower Annual. He is also a recipient of a grant from the Kentucky Arts Council.

Mr. Sidway also ventured into commercial and performing arts photography in the 1990s, his work appearing in a variety of media, including magazines, journals, posters, and pictorial coffee table books. Dedicating himself exclusively to digital photography in 2008, he entered a prolific new period, adding significantly to his landscape portfolio, leading to the publication of his first photographic book in 2014, a career retrospective of his landscape work entitled, Pursuing the Light: Forty Years of Photography.

The North American Thebaid is his second photographic book and fulfills a desire born thirty years prior, in the earliest years of his life in the Orthodox Christian Church.

(From The North American Thebaid Book)