Tag: aesthetics

The best the world of photography books has to offer

Spring brings with it the awards season, be they the Oscars or Pulitzers. Never having been nominated for (or a viable candidate for) an Oscar, I don’t follow it all that closely. Having been nominated for a Pulitzer once (by the Philadelphia Inquirer) I have a bit more of a stake in that game. The older I get, the more I wonder about the judging of many of these competitions. The recent announcement of two such annual awards left me more bewildered than usual. Read More

A blessing and a curse

I have been putting a lot of time lately into my project photographing inside homes after the foreclosure and before the houses are cleaned up and resold. That moment is when I see what I think of the “ghosts” of the people who used to live in those homes. The work has been very well received lately, which got me wondering why that is. The educator in me (and the photographer in me) both want to understand why the images seem to work well for others. Every photographer has an idea about what his or her work should do for the viewer of the work, but so what. When a body of work succeeds in both the photographer’s mind and the viewer’s eye that’s something worth thinking about. Read More

An evening with Jackson Browne

I attended a Jackson Browne concert in Hanford, California last weekend. I have loved his music since I was introduced to it in high school. I have followed his career and music over the years, attending concerts along the way, when I could afford it and when our paths crossed. The Hanford concert was in a wonderful small venue (and reasonably priced,) so I spent what was billed as “an evening with Jackson Browne.” Throughout the concert (and for days afterward,) I was thinking about my photography, his music and why I felt such an affinity for his work. Read More

Summertime snippets

I am just settling into place in India, where I will be for much of the next six weeks. I am here partly because my daughter is volunteering at a school working with under-served children in Bangalore, India. I am also here because it is a great place to photograph (and spend part of the summer.) With summer and the idea of vacation in mind, my blog entries over next couple months may be shorter, the result of my own efforts to enjoy my holiday. Read More

Critics and controversy

There is a new exhibition of the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. I look forward to seeing it in person in the near future. I have long been a fan of Cartier-Bresson’s work. His was some of the first important work I saw when I was studying the history of photography. The work showed me how photography could be so much more than just a representation of the scene in front of the camera. Up to that point I had learned most of what I knew about photography from a commercial photographer turned photo teacher. Starting from that point, Cartier-Bresson’s work was a paradigm shift for me. In the recent review in the New York Times of the new Cartier-Bresson exhibition, the reviewer is attempting to similarly shift the paradigm of how we should consider the work of Cartier-Bresson. His approach struck me as almost absurd (and his review had factual errors.) Read More

Expanding thoughts on the question is photography art?

While en route to Guangzhou, China, we spent a few fascinating days in Hong Kong. A series of events got me thinking about the old “is photography art?” question. I am not sure that such a question is ever really likely to be fully “settled.” Based on what I saw and did while in Hong Kong, I added a couple of new perspectives to my own thinking about that question. Proof again that one benefit of going half way around the world is that you see things differently after such a trip. Read More

Adapting to new technology verses adopting a new philosophy

As commercial photographers, we are continually adapting to new technologies, moving from black and white, to color (then to slides) and now to digital. Similarly we are often expected to adopt new strategies and philosophies as the market we work within changes. More and more folks I hear from are finding that second process of adopting harder to take, and I am not sure it is just a function of our advancing ages. Read More