7.1.19


Paris, 2002

Seen this picture before? So what? Look again—there's more to be seen, which is why I often go back to look again.

"Unlike some photographers who stalked their subjects, intent on capturing what one of them, Henri Cartier-Bresson, called 'the decisive moment,' [Robert] Doisneau staged his images, directing his subjects until the pictures told the story he wanted. 'I don't photograph life as it is,' he said, 'but life as I would like it to be.' "
[from John Baxter's "Saint-Germain-des-Pres"]

For me, fortuity governs my life. As a student of Minor White, I learned to 'see with an empty mind'. Make one exposure and move on…only learning afterwards to see what I saw unconsciously then. All very strange, but it keeps me going back, and onward.

Paris, 2006

1 comment:

Miguel Tejada-Flores said...

I love "Le Grand Air". And I share at least some of your fondness for fortuity. I usually don't try to figure out why I'm taking the picture that I want to take till afterwards. Sometimes, in the darkroom - or rather the digital computer darkroom that has replaced my old darkroom - some of it or parts of it come together, or it 'comes to me'. Other times, I look at the image and scratch my head and wonder what possessed me to take that particular frame or picture. Then, occasionally, I read some of Ming Thein's elegantly articulated theories of composition or photography and part of me admires them and part of me just scratches my head in bemused acceptance of the fact that my photographer's brain, or eye, or whatever it is that governs the process in me, just doesn't work that way.

I like the Minor White quote too. Makes me want to read more of his words, and probably revisit some of his images.

Thanks for this post. It's given some of my undernourished neurons food for thought.