I wonder how much of the vogue for photographs to express some deeper meaning relates to Szarkowski’s mirror-window dichotomy? It seems to me there is a strong preference of late for a rather blunt or simplistic version of the mirror side of the dichotomy, echoed in the oft repeated disdain for “merely aesthetic” or “calendar” […]
My day had started early, before dawn. I drove miles down rough dirt roads to a trailhead. I hoisted my pack onto my back and cinched the straps. Without any real trail to follow, I headed off across the open country generally in a cardinal direction. A couple hours later, after setting up camp, I […]
Just as I am rarely alone, despite how far I might venture into the wilderness, I rarely take an original photograph. Sometimes, my photographs are obviously unoriginal (perhaps not entirely cliché but certainly not obscure). I don’t care if some of my photography looks familiar because other people have been there before me and taken […]
I find something peaceful about these photographs. Looking at them recalls for me the days spent wandering alone. Now and then, when I was close to the road or near one of the trails, I would see other people. I might even hear them. But head north west, toward the San Andres mountains and soon […]
Get up before dawn and drive for hours. Camp somewhere or sleep in your vehicle at a trailhead. Get up before dawn again. Hike miles lugging all your equipment, ideally through inclement weather. Burn thousands of calories. Find an amazing scene few others will ever see. Set up tripod and point camera. Wait, sometimes for […]
I make pictures when I can, like other latter-day explorers who work during the week.… No important mandate to chart some vanishing wilderness subsidizes these outings, and even a short drive into the land can become an adventure. Weekend exploration may not be what it used to be, but it’s a compelling act nonetheless. Mark […]
The images I take generally are not a precise pictorial representation of what my eye see. They’re usually devoid of color for a start off and sometimes they’re even more abstract, hinting at but not fully describing the true nature of the landscape that I’m photographing. Steve Gosling (website)
As photographers, we do not just set out to “capture” an image on film. Rather, as Alfred Stieglitz said, we can use the medium to create an equivalent to the experience of what we see and feel when making a photograph. John Sexton, Listen to the Trees (Boston, 1994), 84.
Photography for me is a creative art. It is not simply an illustrative or interpretive medium.… I try, not always with success, to photograph only what stimulates a recognition of beauty, either that which is intrinsic in the objects of nature or is a manifestation of the wonderful relationships of things in the natural world. […]
My photographs are meditations on the light that illumines and transforms the ordinary, the often overlooked. There are those rare moments when the everyday reality of our world is transcended and one glimpses the eternal and infinite. Marion Patterson, Grains of Sand (Palo Alto, 2002), xi.