©Hunter Armistead

An idle curiosity turned into an avid pursuit in 1975, when a vocational testing service’s top recommendation was that Armistead be a photojournalist. (The service revealed an aptitude in audio pitch discrimination that photographers share.) Soon afterwards he bought his first camera, and found a new and lifelong friend.

The next few years were a period of deep immersion marked by study and a development of portrait photography, represented chiefly by a series on the people of Beersheba Springs in Grundy County, Tennessee, which was primarily shot in 1980.

Following a stint in advertising in Chicago, stock brokerage in Memphis and Nashville, and Film School at USC in Los Angeles, Armistead embarked in 1985 on a career in music as the front man of a college and club touring rock band, Mel and the Party Hats.  Over 500,000 have seen the legendary band, which still plays today.

In 2000, Armistead resumed his connection with photography when he traveled to Nepal following a series of life-changing events. What originally was intended to be a mere recording of the experience turned into three shows once Armistead returned from his three-month intensive of meditation and study in a monastery there.

With the 30 year-old recommendation ringing in his ears, Armistead finally planted both feet in photography in late 2005. As his major influences, he names Man Ray, Richard Avedon, and Jack Spencer as he deepens his study of Old Masters for inspiration in lighting and positioning. His admiration of others notwithstanding, he continues to cultivate the healthy disrespect for rules and convention that he learned in rock and roll.

He is currently working on a book and documentary on American Spiritual Masters.