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Nathan Wirth, a native San Franciscan, is a self taught photographer who uses a variety of techniques— including long exposure and infrared— to express his unending wonder of the fundamental fact of existence. Wirth, who earned both his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in English Literature from San Francisco State University, brings a deep appreciation of poetry to his explorations of place (especially the sea). Poets such as George Oppen, James Schuyler, Seamus Heaney, Lorine Niedecker, Elizabeth Bishop, William Wordsworth, Robert Frost, and George Mackay Brown have played a fundamental role in shaping his attention to the things and places that he photographs. Often returning to the same locations many times, Wirth seeks to explore the silence and the sublimity of those places. In addition to poetry, Wirth is profoundly influenced by the paintings of Edward Hopper, Mark Rothko, Caspar David Friedrich, and Camille Pissarro and the photography of Michael Levin, David Burdeny, Michael Kenna, Edward Weston, and Ansel Adams— as well as the wonderful photography of his friends Joel Tjintjelaar, Brian Day, Steve Landeros, Athena Carey and Teresa Stover. Wirth makes his living teaching English Composition at City College of San Francisco.