DAILY BLOG

"I often think of my work as visual haiku. It is an attempt to evoke and suggest through as few elements as possible rather than to describe with tremendous detail."~ Michael Kenna

“Everyone wants a pop star, see? But I am a protest singer I just had stuff to get off my chest. I had no desire for fame…. I understand I’ve torn up the dreams of those around me. But those aren’t my dreams. No one ever asked me what my dreams were. They just got mad at me for not being who they wanted me to be”

~ Sinead O’Connor

"I photographed Sinead O’Connor for the first time in October 1988 for the NME (the leading British music paper). She was pretty shy, but she was only 21. Like many young musicians, she was quite intimidated by the fact that I’d photographed Ian Curtis (Joy Division). I then photographed her a year later for the same publication, two weeks after her 23rd birthday. She was more sure of herself and liked the ideas we worked with. Many of the shots were single spotlit head shots against a black cloth. This series used a similar light but against a grey cloth, echoing a 60s fashion style. This is my favourite shot from the session. Sinead looks fully in control of the look she’s giving me for the photograph."

~ Kevin Cummins

“Said to be the most beautiful temple in South Korea, the Beopjusa Monastery, tucked in among the lush green hills of Songnisan National Park, was founded in AD 553. The name means ‘temple in which resides the teaching of the Buddha’, and the monastery is dedicated to the worship of Maitreya, the Future Buddha. As this image reveals, it is a place of peace and deep contemplation. ”

~ Steve McCurry

“Photography’s a case of keeping all the pores of the skin open as well as the eyes. A lot of photographers today think that by putting on the uniform, the fishing vest and all the Nikons that makes them a photographer. But it doesn’t. It’s not just seeing. It’s feeling”

 

~ Don McCullin

“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy or any of your time or any of your space."

~ Johnny Cash

 

“A photographic session is a joint interpersonal exchange, a kind of creative encounter session at a high level of intensity. For me , photography is more a process of creating an experience than one of looking for pictures.”

~ Norman Seeff

“Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday’s success or put its failures behind and start over again. That’s the way life is, with a new game every day, and that’s the way baseball is.”

~ Bob Feller
(1918-2010)

"I have seen many manifestations of faith during my travels over the past three decades. Some have been spontaneous, some have been part of a liturgy, some have been prescribed rituals, some have been in magnificent buildings, others have been outside under a tree. Many people's faith is embedded in the way they live their lives."

 

~ Steve McCurry

“I always had a strange feeling about how we order time into the past, present and future, as I never really felt that way. Sometimes, for example, one week can seem shorter than five minutes. When I started to photograph, when I was 19 years old, I felt then that I was playing with time. I was not sure what to do with this idea until much later in life, when I read the science-fiction novel, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.”

~ Miho Kajioka

"I spent the day at a wedding with this family in Sana'a, Yemen. As the father and uncle left late in the afternoon, the boy seemed tired and bored. It reminded me what it was like to go to adult events when I was young, and longing to be out playing. It's a tradition in Yemen for men to wear a Jambiya, a curved dagger, around their waist. It is typically given to sons by their fathers."

~ Steve McCurry

"Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second."

 

~ Marc Riboud

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

"I have always loved light... Its manifestations serve as symbols of the greatest secrets of the unknown. Creativity has enabled me to probe and reveal step by step the unknown. Even though I know I can only travel a short distance, every step in that direction is a transcendental experience."

 

~ Wynn Bullock

Please explore and extend your passion for photography with this curated selection of photography books from the gallery library. With this exceptional selection of titles, you'll gain invaluable insight into the work of these acclaimed photographers and elevate your knowledge with each turn of the page.

“There is no scientific study more vital to man than the study of his own brain. Our entire view of the universe depends on it”

~ Francis Crick

“Sir Francis was absolutely adorable. He had a twinkle in his eye and a tremendous sense of humor and humility abut him- this from the man who discovered the DNA double-helix.We had wonderful conversations about science and metaphysics.This shot, taken at the Salk Institute optimizes the style and sophistication of the man”

~ Norman Seeff

"I find the natural world to be endlessly wondrous in its range of character and texture, from moments of delicate intimacy and subtlety to the massively expansive and powerful."

~ Jeffrey Conley

“I shot Whitney at the height of her career. Her voice was transcendent. She came into my studio so appreciative of what I was doing and very delicate in her interaction with me, more interested in my well being than anything else. I fell in love with her. She was sensitive and vulnerable and open”

~ Norman Seeff

“I decided long ago never to walk in anyone’s shadow. If I fail or if I succeed at least I did as I believed"

~ Whitney Houston

"A city is not gauged by its length and width, but by the broadness of its vision and the height of its dreams."

~ Herb Caen (1916-1997)

“I want my photographs to be sensory, like edible flowers, a visual taste. Color and flowers act as symbol and metaphor to access our senses,”

~ Cig Harvey

Since my earliest days of collecting I have had, and still retain, a great passion for 19th-century travel photography. I am motivated by a visual wanderlust and a keen desire to learn more about other countries, cultures and their peoples. This gateway to explore unseen destinations was given to me via an amazing group of photographers, many of them unnamed and unknown. Undeterred by the rigour and hardship of travel at that time, and often burdened by the unwieldy and cumbersome photographic equipment of the past, they would set forth across the globe in search of adventure and discovery.

In this spirit we are delighted to launch a new feature and series in The Power of Photography project - A Room with a View.  A place to explore the full history of collecting photography, how the medium developed, and the physical presence of each process and print. We’ll be offering works at all price points, all priced and available to ‘buy now’ - or make an enquiry to find out more.

The online portal for A Room with a View aims to recreate a visit to the gallery in person, in a warm and informal environment, sharing treasures from a forty year journey of appreciation.

Explore the Room with a View

“Every movement in the arm of the iguana is the same that we have in our arm – I identify with the iguana as my cousin. All of us came from the same cells. In a moment it was possible to be an iguana and the iguana to be me.”

~ Sebastião Salgado

“What I want is to suggest rather than really show; I like my images to be little seeds sown in people's heads and for them to blossom in everyone's head.”

~ Patrick Taberna

“I’d like to point out to people the divine in a musical language that transcends words. I want to speak to their souls.”

 

~ John Coltrane (1926 - 1967)

"I had access to what felt like a secret world. It was a subject that had been written about and dramatised but I don't think any photographers had ever tackled before. There was a change going on. Someone described it as a 'last hurrah' of the upper classes."

~ Dafydd Jones

"Photography is still the most basic form of magic. Caught in my "box of darkness", the image becomes immortal."

~ Shelia Metzner

"Most of my photos are grounded in people, I look for the unguarded moment, the essential soul peeking out, experience etched on a person’s face."

~ Steve McCurry

“People tend to look at photographs too quickly, superficially. They make assumptions of familiarity. I want to slow the viewer down to appreciate in more detail the beauty of the natural world. We see the world in pieces and put it together in our imagination - a new reality. Each time we look, the fragments reconstitute themselves with subtle differences, a second look nuanced with small changes.”

~ Brigitte Carnochan

Brigitte Carnochan could have easily flourished as a great 19th Century artist. She is a timeless classicist in the sense of someone who can rely on her own innate artistic skills and talent with no need to embrace modern technology to create something truly sublime. She creates because she has to. It is in her soul and her gracious approach to life and her sensitivity to nature around her.

In an era where everyone can and often claims to be a photographer she is an endangered species. She is one of the most talented and dedicated artists I have ever met. To be in her presence is a gift. She is authentic and humble. She is not afraid to embrace beauty as you can see in these pages. She makes it her testament.

“Every night I was going somewhere. I’d work all day on a farm, play all night and get back home about sunrise. I’d get the mule and get right on going. I went to sleep once in the shed. I used to go to sleep so much when we were playing they called me “Sleepy”. But I never missed a note”

~ Sleepy John
(1899-1977)

“ I arrived at a small house far beyond the outskirts of Memphis. My guide asked Sleepy if I could photograph him. Sleepy replied “Okay buts got to buy beer” I couldn’t understand a word of what he was saying-his southern accent was so extreme. My hippie guide had to act as an interpreter. I ended up buying a lot of beer. People from all around the neighborhood rolled up and it turned into a big party.”
~Norman Seeff

"What would please me most is to make photographs as incomprehensible as life is."

~ William Klein

"All I really, really want our love to do
Is to bring out the best in me and in you too"

 

~ "All I Want" by Joni Mitchell

"Photography is never objective.”

 

~ Gianni Berengo Gardin

"If everybody had an ocean
Across the U.S.A
Then everybody'd be surfin'
Like Californi-a
You'd see them wearing their baggies
Huarache sandals too
A bushy bushy blond hairdo
Surfin' U.S.A"

~ "Surfin' U.S.A." by The Beach Boys

"Fashion is not frivolous. It is a part of being alive today."

 

~ Mary Quant
(1930-2023)

"I try not to make conscious decisions about what I am looking for. I don't make elaborate preparations before I go to a location. Essentially I walk, explore, discover and photograph."

~ Michael Kenna

"You get not only a picture of who you're photographing, but you get a picture of yourself at the same time."

~ Bruce Davidson

“The purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better."

~ Robert Francis Kennedy
(1925 - 1968)

"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving."

 

~ Albert Einstein
(1879-1955)

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life"

 

~ Steve Jobs
(1955-2011)

“I was aiming for the rich details and opulent compositions of the Dutch and Flemish Golden Age painters. But soon I discovered it was just too much information. I wanted something simpler — to focus on a specific theme and develop a style.”

~ Ron Van Dongen

"When you take a photo at 1/1000 of a second, the moment can become an eternal fact, an eternal moment. So we have a philosophical problem of objectivity and subjectivity."

 

~ Eikoh Hosoe

"I think that light and shadow have exactly the same duality that exists between life and death."

 

~ Manuel Alvarez Bravo
(1902-2002)

" I feel like I received the photograph, I didn't take it. If you're in the right place at the right time, then all you have to do is push a button. Being a photographer doesn't come into it. Everything I've photographed exists regardless of me, my role is only to be receptive."

 

~ Pentti Sammallahti

“I think I like seeing honesty and I like seeing the truth, and I think I bring that to my films and I bring that to my stills as much as I can. I don't like superficial-looking things.”

~ Jerry Schatzberg

"Sex appeal is 50% what you've got and 50% what people think you've got.”

~ Sophia Loren

“I knew my destiny when I first experienced Yosemite”

~ Ansel Adams
(1902-1984)

“If you see a tree as blue, then make it blue.”

~ Paul Gauguin
(1848 - 1903)

“I had no brief, no agenda at all. They just let me loose. I was free to encounter life. There was a certain sense of grayness everywhere. That’s why these pictures are delicate and I was delicate too”

~ Bruce Davidson

“I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me - like food or water.”

~ Ray Charles
(1930 - 2004)

“Soon after my arrival in NY, I met Robert and Patti at a downtown Manhattan bar. I thought they looked cool and asked them to do a session with me. The authenticity and emotional depth of their love was exactly what I was looking for in my images.”

~ Norman Seeff

"I didn't write it to be cathartic, I wrote it because Robert asked me to… Our relationship was such that I knew what he would want and the quality of what he deserved. So that was my agenda for writing that book. I wrote it to fulfil my vow to him, which was on his deathbed. In finishing, I did feel that I'd fulfilled my promise."

~ Patti Smith

“When I press the shutter, everything I've ever done, ever smiled about, cried about, or loved shapes how I see. Nothing is more important than that moment; it's what makes me see a picture."

~ John Simmons

“She did not stand alone, but what stood behind her, the most potent moral force in her life, was the love of her father.”

~ Harper Lee

Peter Fetterman Gallery is proud to present The Fashion Show and The Flower Show. The exhibitions will be on view between June 17th, 2023 – October 7th, 2023. An opening reception will be held today, Saturday, June 17th from 3:00 – 6:00 PM.

We look forward to seeing you this evening and sharing these two beautiful exhibitions with you all.

Please join us at:

Peter Fetterman Gallery
2525 Michigan Ave, Suite A1
Santa Monica, CA
90404

View The Fashion Show online 
View The Flower Show online

“I can still recall the excitement of seeing the visualization “come true” when I removed the plate from the fixing bath for examination. The desired values were all there in their beautiful negative interpretation. This was one of the most exciting moments of my photographic career.”

~ Ansel Adams
(1902-1984)

"The qualities that have fascinated me and led me to make a particular photograph are usually quite intuitive. I generally don't have a completed concept in my mind when I begin--I move things around, change angles, lighting - until everything seems right."

 

~ Brigitte Carnochan

"If there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went."

 

~ Will Rogers

”As I continued to photograph I became quite joyous. I knew that I could express the things I wanted to say by giving them form through my eyes”

~ Inge Morath
(1923 - 2002)

Photo Basel Switzerland’s first and only international art fair dedicated to photography based art, now in its 8th edition, is open!

The fair takes place during Art Basel week from June 12^th – 18^th  at Volkshaus Basel, just a short walk from Art Basel at the convention centre.

"What I try to achieve is to set up concepts using the human body as a base, while not making it the main focus of the picture. The result is a still image that is built around a person, but all parts of the whole are of equal importance. I reduce my pictures to content, composition, and form because this minimalist approach allows me to put equal emphasis on the idea behind the artwork and the entirety of the image. Portraying a sense of calmness with images that are built up based on geometric shapes is a recurring theme of my work."

~ Noell Oszvald

"I take the rather unpopular view - among photographers - that words and pictures need one another."

~ Thurston Hopkins

“It is difficult to conceive of a substance more impressively brilliant than the spurting plumes of white waters in sunlight against a deep blue sky”

~ Ansel Adams
1902-1984

"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