Reflections on photography, art, beauty and the natural landscape.
“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”
–– Elliott Erwitt
[thanks, Frank Beacham]
Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.
–– Walker Evans
An excerpt from a Bill Moyers interview some time ago with author Barry Lopez:
…there are certain things that people say you shouldn't talk about, because it makes people nervous.
The things that make us uncomfortable in public are a person who wishes to speak of what is beautiful. That makes everybody a little bit nervous, because many of us keep this jaded, cynical separateness with the world, because we're cautious. We're cautious. How many people do you know whose crying out is for intimacy? They want to be known. They want to be touched. But they can't make that intimate connection without being vulnerable. You have to be vulnerable in order to achieve this exchange of intimacy. And you can't be vulnerable unless you can trust the situation. And what we're learning, many of us, is the world is not trustworthy enough for you to be vulnerable to it and gain that intimacy.
In the introduction to "William Eggleston's Guide," John Szarkowski, Director of Photography at MOMA at the time, brilliantly describes what photographers are attempting when searching for and composing an image:
…a photographer wants form, an unarguably right relationship of shapes, a visual stability in which all components are equally important. The photographer hopes, in brief, to discover a tension so exact that it is peace.
In actor and author Wendell Pierce's book, "The Wind In The Reeds" about post-Katrina New Orleans, he recounts his experience acting in the play "Waiting For Godot" and how it resonated with Lower Ninth Ward residents who had lost everything.
The play's director, Paul Chan, asked if it helped achieve social justice or political change, replied that it did not:
It brought people together, yes, but he was trying to bring about "articulate speechlessness." He went on: "My mind was cleared for something else to happen, which I think is what art does. If you do it right, that's what happens."
Viewing this dreamy composite photograph of the Catskill range taken at dusk, one is reminded of the famous exchange in James Fenimore Cooper’s novel “The Pioneers” in which the protagonist, Natty Bumpo, is asked whether venturing out to such scenic spots is worth the effort:
“What do you see when you get there?…"
“Creation!” said Natty, … sweeping one hand around him in a circle –– “all creation, lad…”
Another jewel from author and actor Wendell Pierce, this time from his new book, “The Wind In The Reeds,” about Pierce’s boyhood in New Orleans and his path to the wider world, especially his artistic path:
Together, we look for answers to the same big questions. That’s why we go to the theater. That’s why we go to the art museum. That’s why we go to the club or the concert hall. Seeking that moment of connection or collective catharsis with our fellow human beings –– that is the magic and the mystery that artists conjure. That is why we become artists.
To go wrong in one's own way is better then to go right in someone else's.
–– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
[thanks Goodreads]
Just heard an incredible interview with actor and author Wendell Pierce about returning home to New Orleans after Katrina in order to rebuild his ruined neighborhood. He'd just finished acting in the Beckett play, Waiting For Godot, about:
… two characters searching for something to save them, define them— where have they been, where are they going — and in that play there’s a moment where one of the characters says, ”At this place and in this moment in time, all mankind is us… let us do something while we have the chance.”
And that was an epiphany for me and an awakening. I realized that’s what art is — a form where we reflect on who we are, where we’ve been, where we hope to go… declare our values and then act on them. And so that moved me to return home to rebuild my neighborhood.
This letter from Sherwood Anderson to his son could be said about any artistic endeavor:
Learn to draw. Try to make your hand so unconsciously adept that it will put down what you feel without your having to think of your hands.
Then you can think of the thing before you.
Draw things that have some meaning to you. An apple, what does it mean? The object drawn doesn’t matter so much.
It’s what you feel about it, what it means to you.
The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.
Sherwood Anderson
