Here's an excerpt from an interview with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola — his advice to artists to be true to their vision and who they are:

Always make your work be personal and you never have to lie. If you lie, you will only trip yourself up. You will always get caught in a lie. It is very important for an artist not to lie, and most important is not to lie to yourself. There are some questions that are inappropriate to ask, and rather than lie, I will not answer them because it’s not a question I accept. So many times we are asked things in our work or in life that you want to lie, and all you have to do is say, “No, that is an improper question.”

From an interview with photographer Jeff Jacobsen in the April 2013 issue of Photo District News:

I'm fascinated with the world and what we call "reality." I think it's what photography does best.  I think it's the only thing photography does that is unique as a medium.  It renders a still image from a specific moment in time and space. That's it. But that's, to me, endlessly fascinating. So I'm less interested in conceptual stuff that's set up. I'm always interested in photographs made in reality but [that] have a certain ambiguity about them that allows me – the viewer – to wander around emotionally within the picture.

"To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way."

                                                                                                                            E. M. Forster

(thanks Seth Godin)

Came across a fascinating piece in this week's NEW YORK TIMES about ultra-distance runner Kilian Jornet. His feats of athleticism – running hundreds of miles at a time in mountainous terrain – are a testament to the machine that is the human body. 

What's equally fascinating, though, is the spirit with which he accomplishes these challenges.  While most of his peers are focused on finishing an event in the fastest time possible, Jornet is observing and admiring the natural beauty of the landscape through which he's running – finishing first, which he often does, is merely a side benefit.

From the article:

What are you running after? I asked Jornet. Having beaten men, do you now want to challenge the mountains? He gently corrected me. You don’t beat the mountains. You go when they permit, he said. The speed records and “firsts” aren’t important except for motivation, he insisted. Then he mentioned the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Hughes Galeano, who once likened the ideal of Utopia to the horizon — goals that retreat even as we chase them. “The important thing is not to catch something,” said Jornet,  "What matters in life is the pursuit, and everything we learn along the way. “The important thing,” he said, “is moving.”

I'm enjoying the book "Being Wrong" by Kathryn Schulz – a wide-ranging exploration of how we think about and interpret the world around us.  Sprinkled liberally throughout are excerpts from the disciplines of science, philosophy, epistemology…etc. that she uses to deftly compare and contrast differing viewpoints. 

Here's one I found especially interesting, and in keeping with one of the themes of this blog, namely: can a visual language, e.g., photography be adequately described or translated into written or spoken form?

"The Enlightenment philosopher John Locke thought that error seeped into our lives from the gap between the artificiality of words and the reality of the things they name – from the distance between an indescribable essence and the nearest sayable thing."

“Dare to be naive.”

             – Buckminster Fuller

Fascinating article in the NEW YORK TIMES by Lance Hosey on "Why We Love Beautiful Things." Turns out we may be genetically wired to respond positively to natural beauty.  We've written about this before, passing along a thesis found in the book "The Art Instinct" which made a similar claim.  Here's an excerpt from the TIMES article:

Certain patterns also have universal appeal. Natural fractals — irregular, self-similar geometry — occur virtually everywhere in nature: in coastlines and riverways, in snowflakes and leaf veins, even in our own lungs. In recent years, physicists have found that people invariably prefer a certain mathematical density of fractals — not too thick, not too sparse. The theory is that this particular pattern echoes the shapes of trees, specifically the acacia, on the African savanna, the place stored in our genetic memory from the cradle of the human race. To paraphrase one biologist, beauty is in the genes of the beholder — home is where the genome is.

I was speaking recently with a collector who was attempting to choose from among the hundreds of images we include on the gallery website.  He described looking through every image and said that although he couldn't articulate it exactly, it seemed to him, as he clicked through image after image, that there was a "personality" evident that was more than the subject matter would suggest — something abstract and transcendent. 

I was flattered — he has a discriminating eye — and thanked him for the observation. Later in the week I came across this quote that described, perhaps better than he could, what he experienced:

Beyond the beauty of external forms, there is more here: something that cannot be named, something ineffable, some deep, inner, holy essence. Whenever and wherever there is beauty, this inner essence shines through somehow.
                                                                                                                                — Eckhart Tolle

Came across this refreshing encouragement by Pop artist Andy Warhol:

“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”


Came across an inspiring video interview with photographer Jay Maisel:

"When I go out I try very hard not to pre-determine what I'm going to do, and I want to go out as unprepared as possible so I can get filled up with what the world has to offer, and the more I can be influenced by what's around me the more fun it is for me."

" I don't have a hidden message — I like looking at life — life is very beautiful to me.