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Imitating Another Man’s Process
Continue ReadingIt is fun and also instructive to imitate the style of a different type of photographer — in this case Garry Winogrand, a prolific artist who died with many rolls of film unprocessed plus several hundred thousand pictures developed but unedited, and still he passed on to us an extensive body of finished work. He […]
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What I Owe Mr. P.H. Emerson
Continue ReadingPeter Henry Emerson was a 19th Century British photographer intensely active beginning in the early 1880s, and ending about 1895, after which he photographed for his private consumption and did not publish. During his prime years he created a portfolio entitled “Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads,” a watery area near Yarmouth, north […]
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Practicing De-Familiarization
Continue Reading“Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things….The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and […]
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Digital Cliché-Verre
Continue ReadingIn its original incarnation, cliché-verre (also called glass printing, or photographic etching) was a hybrid technique combining hand-drawing with printmaking and photography, but without using ink or camera. My picture above uses camera and computer, and ink too when it gets printed. It approximates the look of the earliest examples dating from about 1840. The […]
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My Favorite Winter Trees
Continue ReadingDuring the past two winters I traveled north to photograph bare trees. I am inclined toward naked branches rather than limbs dressed in summer foliage. I like to see the structure of things, the patterns of the natural world, which seem endlessly surprising and worthy to contemplate. I took the photograph above at The […]
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Remembering Fox Talbot
Continue ReadingWilliam Henry Fox Talbot was a distinguished English gentleman of the 19th Century, and a failed artist/draftsman. That defeat seems to have propelled him toward his invention of “photogenic drawing,” or “photography.” He put together a book in 1844 called The Pencil of Nature, his metaphorical way of describing the new type of drawing with […]
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An Unconscious Tribute
Continue ReadingRobert Frank’s photograph, “Trolley — New Orleans, 1955” appeared on the cover of his famous book which laid bare America’s dark side. I made this photo with no conscious recollection of Mr. Frank’s image, however I am clear I was under his influence. I have always liked this motif. Frank’s image is much more […]
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Thinking of Sudek
Continue ReadingJosef Sudek suffered a gruesome injury in World War I — as a result he lost his right arm, yet finished a strong career in photography working to an advanced age, using a cumbersome large format camera to the end of his life. I am thinking of a series Mr. Sudek created looking out […]
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Rarely It Happens
Continue ReadingHow does an alignment like this ever happen spontaneously, except with infinite rolls of the dice, and even then …? And how does it happen that a photographer approaches that spot at exactly the right moment to capture this strange synchrony? I lack a good answer.
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Acknowledging Eliot Porter
Continue ReadingIt is safe to say I would not have made this picture without my study and assimilation of Eliot Porter’s images. I did not have any particular composition in mind from his body of work. It is true his most important work appears in color, and my photo above is monochrome; however, the motif here […]
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