ON PHOTOGRAPHY part 2

The goal of fine photographers is to discover themselves and the world and to make strong statements about the world.

You photograph with what you are, with your being, which changes and grows with life experience and education.

What critics write about art is not what art is about. What it is about is what it means to you, how it makes you feel, and not what it makes you think. It's personal, like music.

Your feelings are correct. You may make mistakes in your thoughts or opinions, but your feelings are correct. They are yours, no matter what someone else may feel or think.

The sensation is one of feeling with your eyes. It is not a case of thinking about it. You could say that you train your intuition, the power that we have to know things without reasoning.

A baby can recognize a human face immediately after it's born. It has knowledge of things that has nothing to do with words. It uses intuition. For us, words drown out our finer perceptions. We need to quiet ourselves, and just look. The perception will happen and have its effect.

What can you say about Vivald'i's Four Seasons? The music makes you feel something. It's different for each listener. It's your experience, your pleasure. It's personal. Music is the most abstract art. It is itself; it doesn't need thought to experience it. You may hear someone talk about it, but that is not your experience. Different works evoke different feelings.

What do you feel when you look at a painting? Do you feel uplifted or elated? You won't feel depressed by looking at a Botticelli, but you may when you look at a Francis Bacon work.

Often we can't look at art because the voices in our heads are too busy. Then it is better to come back at a time when the voices are quieter, and just sit and spend some time with the work, not to study it, but just to let it into our consciousness. Feel its presence. The work is more rewarding on the second visit.

The pressure to appreciate is the great enemy of actual enjoyment. Most people don't know what they like because they feel obligated to like so many different things. They feel they're supposed to be overwhelmed, so instead of looking, they spent their time thinking up something to say, something intelligent, or at least clever. -Robert Hellenga

I think most people who visit galleries try to understand art with their intellect, the thinking part of their brain. The work is not to be understood with the intellect, but by the intuitive faculty. Efforts to awaken this intuitive center will succeed if the work is viewed without being verbalized.

Looking at photographs, most people want to see pictures of things, like a collector. What sets a great photograph apart from a snapshot is not the subject of the photograph, but the combination of subject and the coherent expression of the photographer.

Most people want to understand the photograph. Photography is related to ōsculpture, in that photographs show light falling on three dimensional subjects. Photographs are surreal in that they refer to another reality.

Often, people have looked at an image of mine, and asked, "what is it?" I ask them what they think it is, and they come up with all kinds of things. When they insist on knowing, I tell them what the subject is, and all the magic of their imagination is gone, and they are not interested in it any more. They can no longer see the photograph, but only the referent.

It's never the photographers purpose to reproduce the world, but to make some statement about the world.

Here we have an exhibit of my photographs from a career of more than 60 years.

I would like you to get the most out of this exhibit.

This exhibit is not about a particular subject. Rather it is about my vision over a long career in photography; it is about how I see the world.

What I want you to see in my photographs is the photographs themselves, and experience the pleasure of beautiful i¸mages.

I want to point you to this aspect of photography, as itÕs the most difficult aspect to see. The subject of the photograph tends to grab one's attention and draw one in.

We all know what photographs are, we all take pictures, but we now need to think about them in a different way.

"I spent two hours with Botticelli's Primavera today."
-Berenson

We need to spend more time if we want to get more from the work.

When I lived in Ottawa, I went to the National Gallery many times to visit a painting by Gustave Courbet. I would just sit and be with it, because it spoke to me, not in words, but in spirit, in its presence.

Each of my images is a communication with me, and also a communication with yourself. The photograph is a mirror, reflecting you and also me.

Click Here for More Information