The Pavillon de Flore and the Tuileries Gardens : Marie-Charles-Isidore Choiselat 1849
Often I stand amid the corridors of the infinite Manhattan sky scraping towers. When I realize the moment is now, it is as if all life on earth bends for your asking. I stand as if on a skiff becalmed and sense the windless seas recede before my eyes. My forefinger presses the shutter and a single reflex becomes a record of a privileged history that will be seen in history when I die. It is all I know.
Julius Shulman taught me where a photographer should stand in 1976. He set up his camera. He threw the focus cloth over my head and the 8x10 format camera. The moment became part template and spreadsheet for every image I have imagined. It also helped me navigate through a photography life. Julius was teaching me how to see. I could almost hear Sherlock Holmes whispering “It’s elementary…”
Looking at great photography is like reading the diary of a genius. There is a visual map that becomes the quintessential plans to what is gold vs pyrite.
I impossibly tried to stand hand in hand with with the French photographers Choiselat and Ratel. For decades I have tried to emulate in principle their photograph from 170 years ago, to no avail.
Paul Strand Mexico series 1932-1934
I dreamed of a road trip with Paul Strand. In my dreams we discovered the arch in Mexico together. He made magical narratives that circle my mind like fables written just for my eyes. His angle dangles alluring vistas into secrets not yet known. I stand where he stood knowing there is not a possible repeat. Yet I am so happy to know this image.
Albert Renger-Patzsch immortalized the photography of trees. Yet for my eyes his hundreds of photographs that leaned away from the wind into the mist of dawns and twilights stoked my photography passion. He dictated the way objects stood holding the light in play.
My breath halting in mid sentence I realize artistic genius of others allows me to spread my wings. I am compelled to explore ways to execute photography in ways I wasn’t aware. If I need to stop traffic, run across hindering terrains to make the better image, then I need to do it.
miscellaneous
ken Hedrick
Richard Schulman: not too long ago
Sometimes while traveling to various continents or merely across city grids I become like a “Griot” for all the people who want to listen to stories about what the lens may see in worlds not there own, but maybe more importantly worlds right in front of their eyes that they may not see.
Sent from my iPad