Joachim De Blasi, Photographer           Reared and educated in New Jersey, the artist has made his home in the West since 1972, when he moved his family to New Mexico.  In the 1970s and 1980s he pursued his career as a television producer/director and performer for PBS at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.  Having decided to leave broadcasting in 1990, Mr. De Blasi turned his talent for visual expression with lenses to the silver-based art of photography.           He has concentrated on the 4 by 5 view camera since 1992, after a mishap put his 35 mm. camera on the repair shelf.  “It was a good thing,” he says, “as it forced me to concentrate on the view camera and to become extremely critical of every image I sought to capture.  The advantages of extreme sharpness and wide tonal gradation through the Zone System of Ansel Adams also attracted me to this format.”  Mr. De Blasi favours natural landscapes and in them he attempts to portray God’s handiwork, often in concord with the work of man.           In some of his photographs of mundane artifacts humour has found a place.  As for a pictorial philosophy,  Mr. De Blasi has relied on an exhaustive study of the gestalt corporeal paradigm sedulously advocated in works of Kegel, Mandelbrecht and Schopenblatt, i.e., “If it looks good, it is good.”           In the early 1990s the artist lived and worked in Arizona.  Although largely self-taught, he studied art photography in 1993 and 1994 at Arizona State University with Mark Klett and photo historian Bill Jay.  He counts Jody Forster of New Mexico as a major influence in his work.  Mr. De Blasi now resides in Las Cruces, New Mexico.   Acknowledgments       Thanks are herein enthusiastically proffered to a most dedicated staff: WEB MEISTER ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE MGR. TRAVEL COORDINATOR OUR GIRL-SHY OFFICE BOY DARKROOM INTERNE JDB'S SARTORIAL ADVISOR JDB'S UKRAINIAN CHAUFFEUR         BRAD HARALA NORA  MORSE LUCINDA HEDD RANULPH N. LEPHTER NATANIA TINTYPE C.F. ED FITZHUGH PIQOP ANDROPOV