DAILY BLOG

"Great images do not need a commentary or a context to elucidate them. As a matter of fact, it is the greatness of the images themselves that gives a meaning to the context."

~ Gianni Berengo Gardin

We are happy to join with our esteemed colleagues at LA Louver (Venice, CA) to celebrate this summer the beauty and power of botanicals in our two exhibitions, The Flower Show.

“Lillian made visible that heart breaking invisible place between the appearance and the disappearance of things.”

~ Richard Avedon
(1923-2004)

“For me, photography is a subtractive process. If you're making a drawing, you add lines until you've finished, so that's an additive process. If you're making a sculpture out of marble, you subtract and keep chipping away until you have what you want. In the same way, in a world of infinite possible objects to photograph, I eliminate everything I don't want in a frame until I'm finally left with what I do want.”

 

~ Ralph Gibson

“In winter, the elegant ladies wore fur coats that were fitted and cut in such a unique manner, that one could immediately recognize each designer's signature. In the summer, printed dresses made of Lyon silk, combined in rare color harmonies, impeccably made-up faces, protected by flowery capelines illuminated the grey-blue city after sunset. Fragrance trails accompanied these beautiful passers-by. Chanel's N°5 or Guerlain's Chant d'Arômes. To decipher and to recognize them was a magical feeling. The proportions, the balance, the refinement, the purity of the lines of the French creations embodied a rare harmony.”

~ Janine Niépce
(1921 – 2007)

JEFFREY CONLEY

"AN ODE TO NATURE"

Musée de la Photographie Charles Nègre

Opening June 09, 2023
June 10, 2023 - September 24, 2023

“Someday you will know that a father is much happier in his children’s happiness than in his own. I cannot explain it to you: it is a feeling in your body that spreads gladness through you.”

~ Honore de Balzac
(Le Père Goriot, 1835)

“I am a photographer. I’m not an artist. I’m just a witness of what I see.”

~ Gianni Berengo Gardin

“If you look the right way, you can see the whole world is a garden"

~ Frances Hodgson Burnett
(1849-1924)

"I make clothes. Women make fashion."

~ Azzedine Alaïa

"Photography always just gives, it never takes away"

~ Cig Harvey

"Nobody has ever accused me of being an intellectual. So perhaps the most significant asset I bring to my efforts is an innocent eye. Endless curiosity propels me. Then the discipline of years and respect for the affairs of craftsmanship allow the vision to develop mysteriously into a surprise. Gratitude for arduous, mundane, or occasionally painful experiences is rare, but the many types of photography in my background have allowed some visual synthesis to emerge from my monkey mind. Restless and impatient, with no time to dwell on such things, I lurch onward. No subject is sacred or safe from my attack. Beware. Being inherently nosy, I poke into every odd corner. Since photography is a process of discovery for me, I periodically produce an image that delights or amuses me. Then I'm anxious to see what it evokes in others."

 

~ Fred Lyon
(1924-2022)

"Manzanar, the site of one of the World War II relocation camps, is about fifteen miles north of Lone Pine. While I was photographing in and around the camp in 1943 and 1944 I made some of my best images. I knew the region well; it is roughly 150 miles from Yosemite over the Tioga Pass – or 400 road miles southward when the Tioga is closed by snow. While at Manzanar for a fortnight in the winter of 1944, Virginia and I arose very early in the mornings and drove to Lone Pine with hopes of a sunrise photograph of the Sierra. After four days of frustration when the mountains were blanketed with heavy cloud, I finally encountered a bright, glistening sunrise with light clouds streaming from the southeast and casting swift moving shadows on the meadow and the dark rolling hills. I set up my camera on my car platform at what I felt was the best location, overlooking a pasture. It was very cold – perhaps near zero – and I waited, shivering, for a shaft of sunlight to flow over the distant trees. A horse grazing in the frosty pasture stood facing away from me with exasperating, stolid persistence. I made several exposures of moments of light and shadow, but the horse was uncooperative, resembling a distant stump. I observed the final shaft of light approaching. At the last moment, the horse turned to show its profile, and I made the exposure. Within a minute the entire area was flooded with sunlight and the natural chiaroscuro was gone. The negative of Winter Sunrise is rather complex to print. It is a problem of agreeable balance between the brilliant snow on the peaks and the dark shadowed hills. I have often thought what a privilege it would be to live and work in this environment, perhaps best before the turn of the century when the efforts of man brought more beauty to the land than now, with our pavements, wires, contrails, and desolation. This photograph suggests a more agreeable past and may remind us that, with a revived dignity and reverence for the earth, more of the world might look like this again."

~ Ansel Adams

“I did know that fundamental changes were taking place… and nobody seemed to be interested in recording the faces of the people or anything in their lives"

 

~ Shirley Baker

"I am not ashamed to say that no man I ever met was my father's equal, and I never loved any other man as much."

 

~ Hedy Lamarr

“I’m quite happy with my pictures. I’ve been co-habitant with them for years now and we know each other inside out. So I feel I’m entitled to say that pictures have a life and a character of their own. Maybe they’re like plants, they won’t really flourish unless you talk to them"

~ Robert Doisneau
(1912-1994)

"In GENESIS, my camera allowed nature to speak to me. And it was my privilege to listen."

~ Sebastião Salgado

"As a rule I do not like to explain my photographs, I want my pictures to be read and explored. I believe a good picture is open to many individual (subjective) associations. I am usually pleased when a viewer finds interpretations that I myself had not been aware of."

 

~ John Gutmann
(1905-1998)

“Influence comes from everywhere but when you are actually shooting you work primarily by instinct. But what is instinct? It is a lifetime of accumulation of influence, experience, knowledge, seeing and hearing. There is little time for reflection in taking a photograph. All your experience comes to a peak and you work on two levels, the conscious and the unconscious”

 

~ Arnold Newman
(1918-2006)

“I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead and anyone who does not remember. betrays them again"

 

~ Elie Wiesel
(1928-2016)

“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in the camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as god himself”

 

~ Elie Wiesel(from his 1956 work “Night")

“Would you like to have an adventure now or would you like to have your tea first?”

~ J.M. Barrie
“Peter Pan”

“Long necks. The thrust of the head in a certain position. The way the fingers work. It’s all part of my painting background”

~ Lillian Bassman
(1917-2012)

“Photography is 1% talent and 99% moving furniture”

 

~ Arnold Newman

“I love New York even though it isn’t mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it”

 

~ Truman Capote

“I can’t recall anyone at Picture Post Magazine mentioning the ethics of photo journalism. It was just understood, a code of behavior which reflected the seriousness of the magazine”

~ Thurston Hopkins

(1913-2014)

 

“This Royal Throne of Kings, this sceptered isle,
This earth of majesty this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi paradise
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war
This happy breed of men, this little world
This precious stone set in a silver sea
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house
Against the envy of less happier lands
This blessed plot, this earth
This realm, This England”

~ William Shakespeare
(Richard II)

“To me photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place. I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them"

 

~ Elliott Erwitt

“The moment always dictates in my work. Everybody can look, but they don’t necessarily see. I see a situation and I know that it’s right”

~ André Kertész
(1894-1985)

"It’s up to us, as mothers and mother-figures, to give the girls in our lives the kind of support that keeps their flame lit and lifts up their voices — not necessarily with our own words, but by letting them find the words themselves.”

~ Michelle Obama
(Former First Lady of the United States)

“I photographed real life - not the way it was, but the way I felt it. That is the most important thing, not analyzing but feeling”

 

~ André Kertész
(1894-1985)

“Be sure to take the lens cap off before photographing”

~ Elliott Erwitt

"I’m interested primarily in people, and human behavior – how people relate to each other and their environment."

 

~ Steve McCurry

"My best pictures are always taken when I succeed in establishing a bond of sympathy with my sitter"

~ Doris Ulmann
(1882 - 1934)

"Artists are the gate keepers of truth. We are civilization’s radical voice”

~ Paul Robeson
(1898 -1976)

“The pursuit of Justice is all I have ever known”

~ Harry Belafonte
(1927 - 2023)

"I think of being out in the landscape as a time to harvest observations - then in the darkroom is the time where the observation finds its voice, its landing space in its physical manifestation as a platinum/ palladium print."

 

~ Jeffrey Conley

"Mothers hold their children's hands for a short while, but their hearts forever."

 

~ Unknown

“A photograph is neither taken or seized by force. It offers itself up. It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos”

~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

“The ideal picture tells something of the essence of life. It sums up emotion, it holds the feeling of movement thereby implying the continuity of life. It shows some aspect of humanity, the way that the person who looks at the picture will at once recognize as startlingly true”

 

~ Bert Hardy

“A good editor, a good stylist and a good model are what makes a good fashion photograph. That and having a good rapport with your subject. If they are comfortable with you they’ll be comfortable in front of your camera”

~ Arthur Elgort

 

“Being the muse of the photographer is what I like about this profession”

 

~ Nadja Auermann

"First you study photography, then you practice photography, then you serve photography, and finally one becomes photography."

~ Ralph Gibson

"A picture can express a universal humanism, or simply reveal a delicate and poignant truth by exposing a slice of life that might otherwise pass unnoticed."

~ Steve McCurry

“My camera is like the arrow. Do I reach the target or does the target reach me or is it the same thing? It’s all very emotional.”

~ Bernard Plossu

"It's surely our responsibility to do everything within our power to create a planet that provides a home not just for us, but for all life on Earth."

~ Sir David Attenborough

“We create our buildings and then they create us. Likewise, we construct our circle of friends and our communities and then they construct us.”

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

“I try to be aware of light at all times. I’m always watching for it. I am not looking at light because I am a photographer. I am a photographer because I am deeply involved with light”

~ Ruth Bernhard

“I believe in and make no apologies for photography. It is the most important graphic medium of our time. It does not have to be -indeed cannot be compared to painting. It has different means and aims”

~ Edward Weston

"I can’t stress enough how important observation is as the foundational component of being a photographer. It is all about noticing things; light, texture, form, the confluence of these elements within infinite combinations. Essentially my passion for landscape photography came through being a person who is a certain type of observant as well as someone who has always felt at peace and tremendously as ease out in nature."

~ Jeffrey Conley

“My work begins with recording an image, but it is not finished until I have made a fine print. That is my photograph. A lot goes into a finished documentary photograph, a very personal view of life, a knowledge of technique and of course information. It is the information that grabs the viewer but it is the photographers’s art that holds them."

~ George Zimbel

“I am a visually upbeat person. I see things that are “up” and it gets me interested"

~ George Zimbel

“There’s nowhere else like London. Nothing at all, anywhere.”

~ Dame Vivienne Westwood
(1941–2022)

“I grew up not wanting to grow up. Growing up seemed terrible. To me it was awful. Children were free and sane and grown ups were hideous”

~ Mary Quant
(1930-2023)

“It is given to a fortunate few to be born at the right time, in the right place with the right talents. In recent fashion there are three. Chanel, Dior and Mary Quant”

~ Ernestine Carter

“At 16 I was a funny, skinny little thing, all eyelashes and legs. And then suddenly people told me I was gorgeous. I thought they had gone mad”

~ Twiggy

"My love of photography is deep. I'm in it forever..”

~ Cig Harvey

“At Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, I found Einstein, a simple, kindly almost childlike man, too great for any of the posturing of eminence. One did not have to understand his science to feel the power of his mind or the force of his personality. He spoke sadly, yet sincerely as one who had looked into the universe, far past mankind’s small affairs. When I asked him what the world would be like were another atomic bomb to be dropped, he replied wearily “Alas we will no longer be able to hear the music of Mozart”.

~ Yousuf Karsh

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning”

~ Albert Einstein

“There were about 100 people who ran the 1960’s in England and I was fortunate enough to meet, work with and/or photograph virtually all of them”

~ Robert Whitaker

“Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow”

~ John Lennon

"Mother's love, that divine gift which comforts, purifies, and strengthens all who seek it."

~ Louisa May Alcott

“But oh, San Francisco! It is and has everything. The wonderful sunlight there, the hills, the great bridges, the Pacific at your shoes. Beautiful Chinatown .. Every race in the world. The sardine fleets sailing out. The little cable cars whizzing down the city hills”

~ Dylan Thomas
(Poet, Writer)
1914 - 1953

"It’s difficult to get there, but once you manage to find your own voice it gets somewhat easier, because you know what you want to see in your images."

 

~ Noell Oszvald

"I see these hand treated palm sized prints as a continuation of not only that adoration, but as a collection of moments. Moments that one may overlook but I want to make them feel big and significant. And things, physical or otherwise, do not have to be vast or demonstrative to have great meaning and relevance."

 

-Ernesto Esquer

“The world makes up my pictures not me"

~ Lee Friedlander

“In the past decade a new generation of photographers has directed the documentary approach towards more personal ends. Their aim has been not to reform life, but to know it. Their work betrays a sympathy - a trust, an affection - for the imperfections and frailties of society. They like the real world in spite of it’s terrors as the source of all wonder and fascination and value-no less precious for being irrational ."

~ John Szarkowski

“I am possessed by Photography”

~ Bernard Plossu

“Richard Diebenkorn’s fame as a painter continues to grow. Here he’s in his Oakland studio, but I first knew him in Sausalito, where a group of artists would sit around with a jug of Gallo’s Heavy Burgundy and moan about how badly they were treated. Diebenkorn, always the lanky kid in the corner of that group, never joined in on the complaining. A burning cigarette was his constant companion in almost every shot I ever made of him”

~ Fred Lyon

“I don’t go into the studio with the idea of “saying” something. What I do is face the blank canvas and put a few arbitrary marks on it that start me on some sort of dialogue”

~ Richard Diebenkorn

“I saw the small old woman coming towards us down the sidewalk. I was intrigued and wanted to catch her passing Neil. The mistake to me was that I had in my haste focused the lens just past the two figures closer to the fence than to Neil’s face.That was the original reason why I made a small sized print and solarized it to help with the apparent sharpness.. But the solarization in this case added a somewhat spooky dimension to the image, which Neil took to immediately”

~ Joel Bernstein

“When you’re young, you don’t have any experience-you are charged up but you’re out of control. And if you’re old and you’re not charged up, then all you have are memories. But if you’re charged and stimulated by what’s going on around you and you also have experience, you know what to appreciate and what to pass by”

~ Neil Young

“Men photograph a female nude as if she belonged to them. I photograph a woman as part of the universe”

 

~ Ruth Bernhard

“In photography, we don’t capture time, we evoke it. It flows like fine sand, endless. We don’t take a photograph, we “see” it, then we share it with others. I practice photography to be on one level with the world and what is happening”

 

~ Bernard Plossu

“I never question what to do. It tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help”

 

~ Ruth Bernhard
(1905-2006)

I think this is one of the most expressive jazz images I've ever made. Of course, I didn't make it, I just captured it.

 

~ Fred Lyon
(1924-2022)

“I decided to photograph her as another friend had described her
“Georgia, her pure profile calm, clearer sleek black hair drawn swiftly back into a tight knot at the nape of her necktie strong white hands, touching and lifting everything, even the boiled eggs, as if they were living things-sensitive slow moving hands, coming out of the black and white, always this black and white".

 

~ Yousuf Karsh
(1908-2002)

“It’s not enough to be nice in life. You’ve got to have nerve. To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage.”

 

~ Georgia O’Keefe
(1887-1986)

"I would strongly encourage anybody embarking in photography as a career to embrace and enjoy the whole process. Being a photographer can be a wonderful way to experience the world."

 

~ Michael Kenna

“You don’t take a photo, the photo gives itself to you”

 

~ Pentti Sammallahti

“The mark of a successful individual is one that has spent an entire day on the bank of a river without feeling guilty about it.”

 

~ Chinese Proverb

“A picture is like a prayer”

 

~ Harry Callahan
(1912-1999)

"One day in a second-hand shop near Covent Garden, I found a 70 year old wooden Kodak. I was delighted. Like nineteenth-century cameras it had no shutter, and the wide-angle lens, with an aperture as minute as a pin-hole, was focused on infinity. In 1926, Edward Weston wrote in his diary “The camera sees more than the eyes, so why not make use of it”. My new camera saw more and saw it differently. It created a great illusion of space, an unrealistically steep perspective and it distorted. When I began to photograph nudes, I let myself be guided by this camera and instead of photographing what I saw, I photographed what the camera was seeing. I interfered very little, and the lens produced anatomical images and shapes which my eyes had never observed."

~ Bill Brandt
(1904-1983)

“Always carry a camera, it's tough to shoot a picture without one”

~ Jay Maisel

“It’s the subject matter that counts. I’m interested in revealing the subject in a new way to intensify it. A photo is able to capture a moment that people can’t always see”

 

~ Harry Callahan

“The maestro’s villa was a photographer’s nightmare, with his boisterous children bicycling through vast rooms already crowded with canvases. I eagerly accepted Picasso’s alternate suggestion to meet later in Vallauris at his ceramics gallery. “He will never be here” the gallery owner commented, when my assistant and two hundred pounds of equipment arrived. “He says the same thing to every photographer”. To everyone’s amazement the “old lion” not only kept his appointment with me but was prompt and wore a new shirt. He could partially view himself in my large format lens and intuitively moved to complete the composition”

 

~ Yousuf Karsh
(1908-2002)

“For those who know how to read, I have painted my autobiography”

~ Pablo Picasso
(1881-1973)

“I have spent my lifetime taking photographs. The photograph fulfills my deep need to stop things from disappearing. It makes transience less painful and retains some of the special magic which I have looked for and found. I have tried to create order out of chaos, to find stability in flux and beauty in the most unlikely places”

~ Dorothy Bohm

“My work begins with recording an image, but it is not finished until I have made a fine print. That is my photograph. A lot goes into a finished documentary photograph, a very personal view of life, a knowledge of technique and of course, information. It is the information that gets the viewer, but it is the photographer’s art that holds them."

~ George Zimbel

“The Sonoran Desert bloom is a magical time for us in this area. Thanks to the winter rains, brown and arid is replaced with a magnificent array of colors, with flowers popping up seemingly overnight. Cactus flowers in particular are the greatest gift. After hibernating and saving up their energy during the cold months, the mother cactus plant releases a display of hues and tones that one would think come from another world. This hand colored print serves as tribute to all the colors of prickly pear cactus you see around the desert during this blooming period.”

“You can’t get away from the element of luck in sports photography, but what makes a great sports photographer is that when we get lucky we don’t miss it”

 

~Neil Leifer

“Photography is an adventure just as life is an adventure. If a man or a woman wishes to express themselves photographically, they must understand surely to a certain extent, their relationship to life. I am interested in relating the problems that affect me to some set of values that I am trying to discover and establish as being my life. I want to discover them through photography”

~ Harry Callahan

“If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.”

 

~ Eve Arnold

“I am very fond of this image and it has qualities of the mystical and the universal with connotations of both the astronomical and also the molecular which I find satisfying. The scale is very ambiguous to most viewers and I enjoy presenting that kind of puzzle as it leaves space for many more different kinds of interpretations."

 

~ Don Worth

“If you choose your subject selectively, intuitively, the camera can write poetry.”

 

~ Harry Callahan

“The eternal is a moment that breathes and contains life, the span of one breath”

~ Edouard Boubat

“Horst takes the inert clay of human flesh and models it into the decorative shapes of his own devising. Every gesture of his models is planned, every line controlled and coordinated to the whole of the picture. Some gestures look natural and careless because they are carefully rehearsed. The others, like Voltaire’s god were invented by the artist because they did not exist”

~ Mehemed Agha
(1929-1978)
Art Director - American Vogue

“There is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish.”

~ Michelle Obama