Dick Arentz is a retired oral surgeon in Arizona. For several years, he has traveled throughout the United State and Europe photographing landscapes with his 12 x 20" view camera. He produces platinum and palladium prints on specially made paper stock which he hand coats with a light-sensitive emulsion.

In 1969, after pursuing amateur activities, Dick Arentz began three years of study with Phil Davis of the Photography Department at the University of Michigan. After a sabbatical in Europe in 1973, Arentz relocated in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he taught studio and photographic history at Northern Arizona University, and kept his day job as an oral surgeon to finance his artistic pursuits. He returned to Ann Arbor in 1980 to study the platinum process with Phil Davis. Because of the lack of published information and the unpredictability of materials, he began researching and writing about platinum and palladium techniques. In 1983, he began to produce negatives with an antique 12 x 20" Folmer and Schwing Camera.

In 1988, desirous of a change in subject matter, Arentz accepted an Isaac W. Bernheim Fellowship to live and work in Kentucky. He began a two year project photographing Midsouthern states and Appalachia, concentrating on the human effect of the landscape. In 1990, a traveling exhibition and catalogue of that work, Outside the Mainstream, was funded by the NEA.