Karl Ove Knausgård is suspicious of photographs, or any art really, that he likes for primarily aesthetic reasons. A profound Protestantism, he thinks, rejects anything that comes too easily, that doesn’t require effort and work. He worries that he must contemplate a photograph in order to discern its meaning and therefore its significance. Only such […]
Whenever I see a new picture I immediately seem to like and find aesthetically pleasing, I am suspicious. This cannot possibly be good, I think to myself. This cannot possibly be art. It feels like the spontaneous pleasure, the immediate sense of aesthetic satisfaction I derive in such instances is too easy and too shallow […]
La photographie, ainsi que je la comprends, est simplement un autre moyen de prendre des notes. Comme toutes notes, les notes photographiques sont forcément incomplètes, car il se peut qu’elles n’expriment pas le sujet sous toutes ses faces, mais chaque photographie doit toucher l’essentiel du sujet car le déclic rend cette photographie définitive. H. Cartier-Bresson, […]
John D’Arcy was a wealthy landowner who built this castle ca. 1818, just outside the town he founded. He and his family lived in it for about twenty years. After he died, his son inherited the castle and lived there until the family went bankrupt about a decade later. New owners. Renovations. Yet more new […]
It is important for us not to compare our work to the work of others, as challenging as that may be. It is simply human nature to look outside ourselves, rather than face that which exists internally. Comparison is ego-based and unproductive in the long run. Dan Winters, Road to Seeing, 133
I continue to be inspired by Mapplethorpe’s photographs of flowers. The quiet puttering around as I set up and move lights is a pleasure. The way the process encourages me to study the flowers and to see things I would otherwise miss. It’s quiet and contemplative in an otherwise noisy world. Anyway, I’ve updated the […]
“Digital Asset Management” is not my strong suit. I don’t consistently “tag” photos. My organizational scheme reflects more my experiences in making the photograph than the subject of any given photo — I tend to group images taken at a time and place. Consequently, I end up with digital piles of images in directories that […]
“Flowers are too easy,” a friend cautioned when I mentioned my fascination with taking pictures of flowers. Apparently, anybody and everybody shoots flowers. I noted that Robert Mapplethorpe’s Flora was a beautiful meditation on flowers, reveling in their diversity and the many ways they can be arranged and lit. He seemed surprised that such a […]
It was a miserable day. Cold and windy, and then cold, windy, and snowy. Stores closed early because the “winter storm warning.” Most people wisely chose to stay home, warm and dry. A perfect day, it seemed to me, to go for a hike. Thick leaden clouds and blowing snow created a sort of post-apocalyptic […]
COVID continues to disrupt lives and shape our experiences. I wonder how this student and his friends would be playing in the snow if times were different. It was a particularly cold January evening as a student, carrying his dinner, wandered back to eat alone in his dorm room. The snow only added to the […]