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“Landscape is nearly always present in one way or another in my work. Perhaps the key here is the triple meaning of “landscape”, a type of picture, a type of view and a type of place. The three cannot really be separated. The experience of a place is shaped in advance by our experience of images of it and of related places. It is easy to realize this but coming to terms with the profound implication of it can take a long time. It is a moving dynamic."

~ Anastasia Samoylova

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“Take one camera with film: add one knowing eye and as much strong feeling as you have available: mix well with a generous portion of your own unique personality: expose to the right light for the exact fraction, and process until beauty appears”

 

~ Ruth Bernhard
(1905-2006)

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"My working method consists of two parts. The first is collecting, a fully intuitively process, in which the emotional experience is key and technique is of minor or very little importance. When photographing, for example, I don’t pay that many attention to sharpness. However, in the second stage, after the material has been collected, I’ll put all the dedication into the work, the editing, the printing. This process can take a long time, just like aging wine. It is impossible to predict what will come out, but I treat this second part with the most care and attention. Knowing, that the real beauty lies in the imperfection, the little mistakes, edges or elements that you didn't foresee."

 

~ Paul Cupido

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"Photography is so connected to time, its our currency"

 

~ Cig Harvey

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“There are no words to convey the moods of those moments. I believe that if I am able to express what I saw and felt, the image will contain qualities that may provide a basis for an imaginative response by the viewer”

 

~ Ansel Adams
(1902-1984)

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"I find the south Iceland coast to be ever compelling. The conditions of lighting and weather are constantly in transition (often quite cold and windy). Sometimes the sky, sea, and land seem to merge seemingly without separation. It’s a wondrous, vast, and elemental place. A place to find perspective."

 

~ Jeffrey Conley

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"Photography is a medium, a language, through which I might come to experience directly, live more closely with, the interaction between myself and nature."

 

~ Paul Caponigro

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"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

 

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“Ah! when shall all men’s good
Be each man’s rule, and Universal Peace
Lie like a shaft of light across the land…”

 

~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,
from the poem The Golden Year, 1842

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“The cliché is true: you must navigate through darkness to reach the lighter parts. The darker parts serve as the humus ground to nurture the light.”

~ Paul Cupido 

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Bullock’s pictures have great power. They are at once simple and complex, stark and tender, precise and suggestive…. Opposites are…intensely present in the work of Wynn Bullock and his pictures radiate meaning.

~ Nat Herz
from “Wynn Bullock: A Critical Appreciation”, Infinity, Nov. 1961

"In 1957, the year Log and Horsetails was made, I turned twelve and the major topics for morning walks and talks with Dad were “space/time” and “opposites” and how those concepts could enrich our capacities to perceive, understand, and interrelate to the world within and around us… Not surprisingly, at that time I certainly couldn’t have described what he talked about in the way I just have. However, when I first saw Log and Horsetails, I had an “aha” moment and a seed of understanding began to take root. In addition to being an eloquent, richly meaningful image, for me it will always be a treasured reminder of Dad as a teacher/mentor as well as a marker of my own growth as a person."

~ Barbara Bullock-Wilson

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“While human life is fleeting, our individual lives are a rich tapestry of experience an memories”

 

~ Paul Cupido

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"Torii gates in Japan symbolize the Shinto belief that deities reside not just in shrines, temples churches, mosques, synagogues and other institutionalized religious structures, but in nature, in the earth, sky and water. These gates serve as reminders to respect and honor the land, the earth and our universe. Personally, I regard them almost as road signs directing me to slow down and smell the roses. Every individual will have their own interpretations, but when I see a Torii gate, I immediately want to free myself from unwanted distractions, focus on what is important, escape from the noise of the world, unclutter my “stuff" and prioritize life. These are heady and ambitious resolutions, usually quite forgotten when back in the “other” world. This particular Torii gate stands outside a small shrine on a sparsely populated island in Shikoku. I have photographed it three times so far, always cognizant that the experience of concentrated waiting and watching could be considered a form of meditation, appropriate to the location."

 

~Michael Kenna

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“My pictures are an urgent call to live. A primal roar. Be here now. Experience this. Feel this. They are an invitation to experience the natural world in an immersive way, to find and celebrate beauty in the everyday. I want people to see my work and seek more”

 

~ Cig Harvey

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"Driving alone in Hokkaido, some twenty years ago, I was startled to see an attractive fence, climbing up a snow-covered hillside. I stopped the car by the side of the road and photographed it. Later, I would need a truck driver to tow me out of the field of snow where I had inadvertently parked, but that’s another story. Almost every year since, I have returned to Hokkaido and have continued to photograph this fence and the hillside. The minimalism and sheer simplicity of the scene transforms three dimensions into two, and the sparse elements involved seem to make the print more like a Sumi-e ink painting than a photograph. One might think that little could change, year in year out, in such a scene. Yet, each time I revisit, I find that it is different. Perhaps a new pattern and configuration has appeared, an arrangement of forms changes, distance seems to contract or lengthen to become ambiguous, perspectives may shift, snow levels always vary, and the light is never the same. I am so appreciative of this location. It is a gift which keeps giving."

~ Michael Kenna

"Key Largo, is one of the earliest images in the project. At that time, I was still photographing speculatively, without any preconceived agenda. Having moved to Miami earlier that year, it all seemed wild and exotic. The first hurricane warnings appeared in the summer. On a weekend getaway to the Keys, I took this photograph of my son climbing on a branch over the ocean. I think of this image as an allegory, both idyllic and uncertain about the future of our children in this changing climate. It appears that solving the crisis will fall largely on them."

 

~ Anastasia Samoylova

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"The morning had been far from easy. I had been walking in snow shoes for over an hour, up a steep hill, with Tsuyoshi, my Hokkaido guide of almost twenty years. It was pre-dawn and freezing cold. I had almost reached our goal - a specific tree which sat on a high horizon. My normal modus operandi is to make pictures from a distance with my Hasselblad cameras before moving closer. There is a practical aspect to this as it avoids messing up the foreground with footprints. Eventually, I reached what I considered to be the perfect spot for the best perspective on the tree and I stamped down the snow so that I could plant the tripod. Framing and focussing on the tree, I measured the light with my exposure meter, breathed in and slowly pressed the cable release to trigger the camera shutter. A healthy Hasselblad exposure sounded. Winding the film on, I bracketed half a stop as I often do, and attempted another exposure. This time, nothing happened. My lens had jammed. In my experience, old mechanical cameras sometimes misbehave in sub zero conditions. I don’t blame them - so do I - or would like to. I was not worried. Being a “professional", I always carried two camera bodies with me when out in the landscape. After swapping them out, I went through the same process, pressed the shutter and, only silence. In all of my 50 years of photographing, I have never before had two cameras break down at the same time. After much fumbling around in the cold, cajoling, pleading, cursing, and trying every which way to remedy the situation, I had to give up and return to base. Once back at our car, Tsuyoshi phoned around Hokkaido and finally found a ninety year old camera repair person, many miles away in Asahikawa, who would attempt to repair my cameras. He was able to temporarily fix one, but not the other, and expressed uncertainly that ANY of the photographs I had made that morning, before the camera jammed, would come out. Imagine my delight (and relief) then, months later, after the film was processed, to find this one, well-exposed, image on the film. I consider myself very lucky, and, when its comes down to it, surely, good fortune is one of the most valuable pieces of equipment a photographer can possibly be blessed with."

~ Michael Kenna

"While walking along a dark, murky salt marsh, I photographed a hunting pelican in fading daylight. The scene reminded me of a Dutch still life. The dark water and dim side light created a chiaroscuro effect. I have lived in Miami for seven years, but the abundant wildlife here does not get old. Occasionally, pelicans land right next to you if you are in the ocean, and small fishes try to hide under your body."

~ Anastasia Samoylova

We were traveling along the Redwood Highway trying to find a place to have a picnic. The road was so littered with cans and rubbish that we rode for miles and couldn’t find a place. Finally, we just went off and had our lunch amid the litter. When it was over, I wandered off the highway about 150 feet and saw this incredible scene. It was an ancient virginal forest. Barbara [my daughter] was with us. She was a young virginal child. I knew the qualities of her body would both contrast and harmonize beautifully with the qualities of the dead logs and living plants of the forest. The cyclic character of natural forces would be clearly evident.The light was just right, everything was spatially balanced; the relationships between events – the young child, the new forest covering, the prehistoric trees, the rotting logs – were strong and exciting. Everything went together perfectly. I didn’t have to analyze anything. I just recognized what was in front of me. All I had to do was set up and take the picture.

~ Wynn Bullock

In the still picture, a deeply paradoxical truth exists. Objects can be frozen in time in terms of their specific physical, external qualities, but the mind can respond to these same objects as events in time. This involves, of course, the skill of the photographer in expressing symbolically three dimensional objects and four dimensional time, and the awareness of the viewer that permits him to recognize and respond to the symbols that create the illusion.

~ Wynn Bullock

This photograph was taken during the same family road trip that produced "Child in Forest". The day was cool and misty and we had the beach all to ourselves. Mom and I were hunting for driftwood and shells while Dad was lugging his 8x10 view camera around just in case…. Although what he found wasn’t something we could cart home with us to put in the garden, he did win the prize for the most spectacular find of the day!

~ Barbara Bullock-Wilson

“I work for the pleasure of the work and everything else is a matter for the critics. I think that light and shadow have exactly the same duality that exists between life and death. When one takes a photograph one doesn’t think about saying anything in particular”

 

~ Manuel Alvarez Bravo
(1902-2002)

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“The Garden in Micanopy belongs to a former pine farm turned mansion dating back to the 1840s. While working on my Floridas project, I arrived at the estate late in the evening to check into my rental room. It was pitch black outside; loud cicadas overpowered the sound of my car motor. Despite the tranquil setting, I couldn’t sleep all night due to the old house noises. Quite exhausted in the early morning, I was greeted by this serene yet somewhat ghostly scene. It reminded me of Victorian fairy pictures.”

~ Anastasia Samoylova

“I am to engage with the world with wide open senses. My work is about the magic moments of life as well as its inconveniences. I want to take pictures while forgetting about the process of photography until I’m saturated with an existential sense of life. Every step I take begins with the notion of “mono no aware", the transience of everything, the gentle melancholy of things being sensate to ephemera"

 

~ Paul Cupido

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"Perhaps the secret to being a productive photographer is just about showing up - being in the right place at the right time to record and/or interpret the miraculous beauty of our world. I have frequently visited and photographed around Kussharo Lake, more than most places in Japan. Set high up in the North East of Hokkaido, there is something alluring, attractive and mysterious about the place that consistently calls me back. No matter how many times I walk along its banks, the view is never the same, it changes and recharges every minute to reveal a continual stream of astonishingly beautiful new treasures and delights. On this particularly cold morning, the frozen ice combined with the natural hot spring water to produce clouds of white mist which rose behind black, inky trees. I was there at one of many “right" times and I knew that it would been very difficult to make a poor photograph. Having frequently returned to this location since, I have found, to my great satisfaction, there have been many other “right” times.."

 

~ Michael Kenna

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“For me personal experiences are the initial impulses to create. When presenting the work after period of contemplation, I hope these feelings and emotions become more abstract and universal. In the end it is not about us, but a deeper, universal emotion and connection”

 

~ Paul Cupido

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“Japan has a long and rich tradition of reciprocal gift giving. I have been the grateful recipient of so much over so many years in Japan, and I know that I will never be able to give back in equal measure. I hope this work can be seen as a small token of my desire to do so. I also hope this work can be viewed as a homage to Japan and that it will serve to symbolize my immense ongoing appreciation and deep gratitude for this beautiful and mysterious country”

 

~ Michael Kenna

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"Within the swirling randomness of light and form in nature, sometimes wonderful elements line up out of pure chance - synchronicity. In my view, much of photographing the landscape is about the wonder of ephemeral elements and taking notice of juxtaposed parts that are constantly in motion. It’s all about being present, aware, responsive, and of course, lucky. This photograph was made on a hike on a mostly rainy day in November within the forest of Fontainebleau, France. I was captivated by the graceful shape of the branch and the way the background clouds seemed to mingle with the light and form. The balanced circumstances aligned briefly and then the moment was gone."

 

~ Jeffrey Conley

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“Nature doesn’t wait for anyone”

~ Cig Harvey

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"I believe that childhood can contain certain numinous moments, something that can give a sort of almost cosmic inspiration. I experienced this with the sea close to our family home, which has an enormous tidal effect, with the water ebbing and flowing twice a day. At low tide, you can walk out across the mudflats and witness a myriad of life, including multitudes of birds. Then at high tide, that same area is completely submerged by two meters of water. During our long childhood summers, we would lose all sense of time, sometimes spending so long at the shore that the sea had time to rise, fall, and rise again. At night, the lighthouse would flash through my childhood bedroom window every four seconds, and my grandparents used to tell me it was watching over us. These experiences meant that from a very young age, I was acutely aware of the perpetual rhythms of the island, like the cosmic phenomenon of the moon controlling the tides, the passing of the seasons. That enduring sense of rhythm has certainly influenced my work as an artist."

 

~ Paul Cupido

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“Nature doesn’t wait for anyone”

~ Cig Harvey

“There is an orchestra outside my window”

 

~ Cig Harvey

"People are under the illusion that it's easy...Technically, it is complex. You have a million options with equipment to distract you. I tell my students to simplify their equipment."

 

~ Brett Weston

“I feel that being a photographer is simply the logical endpoint for being someone who has a certain type of ability to observe. As a child, I noticed all sorts of things - some might say I was easily distracted, but really it was my early and formative time of refining my vision. 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.”

 

~ Jeffrey Conley

“I wait for photographs like a pointer dog. It is a question of luck and circumstance. I prefer winter, the worse the weather, the better the photograph will be."

 

~ Pentti Sammallahti

"The essence of my work really is about the little moments of wonder in life"

 

~ Paul Cupido

"Known as the land of fire and ice, Iceland is a place of contrasts. The landscape often feels simultaneously vast, intimate, stark, and delicate. There is something in the distinctive wide-open spaces, combined with ever-changing light and weather conditions, that reveals the implicit grace of the austere topography. It is a special place to witness. In this photograph, land, sky, and water are delineated elements that coalesce in a way that’s unique to the region. It represents a calming experience and memory and I very much look forward to returning."

 

~ Jeffrey Conley

“Adams feels deeply what he sees, he has a reverence for the earth in all its variety, delicacy and strength, but he is the absolute reverse of effusive: he sees with such austerity, even severity, that some have mistakenly called him cold. He has an incomparable technical expertness in communicating what he sees and feels, and for half a century and more he has gone on making photographs so plainly stamped with his personal artistry that they hardly need his steeple-A signature on them. They have taught thousands how to see: they have become household images, they have steadily affirmed life.”~ Wallace Stegner

“In many ways I'm drawn to the natural world because of the cycle of life and the ephemeral nature of flowers and their beauty, meaning that you have to be present right now” 

~ Cig Harvey

"I was lucky to discover a group of pine trees in 2007, while photographing watchtowers on the east coast beaches of Gangwando. When I first saw this copse, the trees were dramatic and dark, set against grey, ominous clouds. I photographed them at dusk, until it started to rain, and then drove off to visit a Buddhist temple many miles away. I was unaware that these trees were imminently at risk to be cut down and replaced with a liquified natural gas industrial development. Fortunately, an environmental movement was set up to fight against the destruction of the trees and it succeeded in preserving them. I was very happy to later learn that my photograph was used as part of their campaign. The LNG plant was eventually built, but it was put underground and the trees survive to this day. I have revisited this location many times since and intend to continue photographing these beautiful trees."

 

~ Michael Kenna

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"For me color is not the most important part of the picture. For me it is the story. It’s the emotional content in the picture"

 

~ Steve McCurry

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“We had no idea about what we would find because it was the first time in my life that I would photograph landscapes and animals. Until then, I had only photographed one animal species in my career: the human being. So, it was an exceptional challenge”

 

~ Sebastião Salgado

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“This photograph of sand, sea and sky was made one early, cloudy morning on a beach in Calais, France. The exposure was probably about twenty minutes, judging by the movement of water and clouds. Over the years, my vision has been influenced by countless other photographers and I have often viewed my subject matter from the privileged shoulders of giants. I have long admired Hiroshi Sugimoto’s time exposure photographs of seafronts and theater screens. Even while making this image, I knew that it was heavily inspired by Sugimoto’s work. In Japanese, “Arigato" means “Thank you”, and “San" is an honorific word used after somebody’s name as a token of respect and esteem. Hence, Thank you Mr. Sugimoto!”

 

~ Michael Kenna 

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“It is a scientistic fact that color affects the body"

 

~ Cig Harvey

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“Photography is much more than just taking pictures – it is a way of life. What you feel, what you want to express, is your ideology and your ethics. It’s a language that allows you to travel over the wave of history.”

 

~ Sebastião Salgado

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"San Francisco is still a magical city. If I were a little tougher, I'd put aside that sentimental romanticism. But the city is the people, and that's what persists. Maybe it's a sickness we all have, but we keep attempting to recreate a lot of what attracted us here in the first place."

 

~ Fred Lyon 

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"Working initially in Japan and then further afield in Asia reaffirmed for me what many artists, such as Albers, Brandt and Rothko, had already taught me: it is not necessary, or even desirable, to fill a rectangle with details. This “empty” white field of snow, shaded from grey to white, invites me, and I hope other viewers, to wander into its open expanse, leaving our tracks behind, before gazing into the distance where a magical mountain appears, floating on the horizon, almost as a mirage. On the right, black trees mark the edge of a forest, suggesting a whole other point of departure. Photography records and describes, but also interprets and invites. As the world continues to spin faster and faster, providing endless distractions, I increasingly prefer to spend time away from crowds, buildings, noise and screens, out in nature. If that is not possible, I can at least look at artworks made in these places and perhaps almost get lost in my own imagination.”

 

~ Michael Kenna

“I often see the materials of photography as being a type of terrain and I construct a landscape that I need to first explore in my mind’s eye if I am to make it manifest as an artful image in silver”

~ Paul Caponigro

 

"Come away, O human child to the waters and the wild. With a faery, hand in hand, for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."

 

~ W. B. Yeates (The Stolen Child)

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“If I take a picture I have to account for it. I have opened something to someone’s reality”

 

~ Bruce Davidson 

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“Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.”

 

~ Oscar Wilde

"This photograph, “First Light, Oregon, 2020”, was made at a small lake in the mountains of central Oregon on a crisp late summer morning. It’s a place I go back to over and over again. Every day seems to have new secrets to reveal. I enjoy sleeping close to the water’s edge and waking very early to revel in the wonderful peace. There is something captivating to me about the way the mist gathers and rises at dawn. I find it mesmerizing."

 

~ Jeffrey Conley

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"I gravitate towards places where humans have been and are no more, to the edge of man’s influence, where the elements are taking over or covering man’s traces."

 

~ Michael Kenna

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“I knew my destiny when I first experienced Yosemite”

 

~ Ansel Adams
(1902-1984)

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“Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space. I know of no sculpture, painting, or music that exceeds the compelling spiritual command of the soaring shape of granite cliff and dome, of patina of light on rock and forest, and of the thunder and whispering of the falling, flowing waters.”

 

~ Ansel Adams
(1902-1984)

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"Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow. It's what sunflowers do."

 

~ Helen Keller

“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)

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"I shoot film. I don’t think I could do work that I really believe in with the feel and the look that I want if I was shooting digitally. There’s a certain resistance that I’ve got. But the light coming through a 6×7 Pentax lens hitting on film, is something digital can’t duplicate—and I love the look of it."

 

~ Kurt Markus

(1947-2022)

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"What I can’t believe is how much I love photography even after all these years, it’s still brand new to me even though, you know, I started working the dark room at thirteen, it’s been my only job, whether I was teaching it or making it."

 

~ Cig Harvey

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“What I want is the world to remember the problems and the people I photograph. What I want is to create a discussion about what is happening around the world and to provoke some debate with these pictures. Nothing more than this. I don’t want people to look at them and appreciate the light and the palate of tones. I want them to look inside and see what the pictures represent, and the kind of people I photograph.”

 

~ Sebastião Salgado

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“In Japan, cherry blossoms, also known as Sakura, are venerated throughout the country as reminders and symbols of the transience and blissful glory of life. Festivals are planned and national meteorological advisories are broadcast to predict and document the sweeping pink wave which starts on the southern island of Okinawa in late February and moves up to northern Hokkaido by early May. In 2002, I was fortunate to be in Nara, Honshu at the perfect time. After a long day of exploring, and with the light fading, I came across these lush trees along the banks of a small canal as I walked back to my hotel. I had no tripod, and to keep the camera steady I jammed it up against a roadside fence. I could hardly see anything in the viewfinder, yet it resulted in this lovely, sweeping, out of focus, foreground shape. I quite forgot about this photograph until the negatives were processed and contact sheets made. The subsequent discovery was a delightfully unexpected and wonderful surprise.”

 

~ Michael Kenna

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"Get a book of great photographs and spend a week studying each shot. Every day, think about a different aspect: subject, composition, tonal range, the moment when the image was taken and how the photograph was made."

 

~ Pentti Sammallahti

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“Adams feels deeply what he sees, he has a reverence for the earth in all its variety, delicacy and strength, but he is the absolute reverse of effusive: he sees with such austerity, even severity, that some have mistakenly called him cold. He has an incomparable technical expertness in communicating what he sees and feels, and for half a century and more he has gone on making photographs so plainly stamped with his personal artistry that they hardly need his steeple-A signature on them. They have taught thousands how to see: they have become household images, they have steadily affirmed life.”

 

~ Wallace Stegner

(1909-1993)

 

“I had a fine north-light window in my San Francisco home which gave beautiful illumination, especially on foggy days. My mother had proudly brought me a large, pale pink rose from our garden and I immediately wanted to photograph it. The north light from the window was marvelous for the translucent petals of the rosebud. I could not find an appropriate background. Everything I tried, bowls, pillows, stacked books and so on was unsatisfactory. I finally remembered a piece of weathered plywood picked up at nearby Baker Beach as wave - worn driftwood. Two pillows on a table supported the wood at the right height under the window and the rose rested comfortably upon it. The relationship of the plywood design to the petal shapes was fortunate and I lost no time completing the picture “

 

~ Ansel Adams
(1902-1984)

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“Photography is space, light, texture of course but the really important element is time - that nano second when the image organizes itself on the ground glass”

 

~ Ezra Stoller

 

"Fallingwater is a great blessing - one of the great blessings to be experienced here on earth, I think nothing yet ever equalled the coordination, sympathetic expression of the great principle of repose where forest and stream and rock and all the elements of structure are combined so quietly that really you listen not to any noise whatsoever although the music of the stream is there. But you listen to Fallingwater the way you listen to the quiet of the country..."

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

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"This is work. My work contains everything I love. It is all in each photograph. No darkness. No despair. No evil. No fear. Love chooses the settings. Love chooses the props. It is both the myth and the reality of my existence. My life on earth, to share. At the same time, it is a document and an homage to all that has inspired me."

~ Sheila Metzner

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"This delicate tree, sitting quietly and improbably in the cold waters of Wanaka Lake, is possibly one of the most photographed trees in New Zealand. I have had the great pleasure to visit it several times, and have usually waited in line behind bus loads of visiting tourists before being able to say hello. On this early pre-dawn morning, however, I was delighted to find myself alone, until I discovered some unexpected company in the form of birds, contentedly sleeping on the tree’s branches. My usual M.O. is to make long time exposures so that clouds and water transform into timeless and enigmatic mists. As the emerging light slowly began to appear, I made several such exposures, aware that both the branches and birds were moving. I was waiting for the birds to leave, before I could make what I considered to be a classical Kenna image, which I later printed and titled 'Wanaka Lake Tree, Study 1'.

Several years passed and I was asked by the publisher Atelier Xavier Barral to participate in a series of books they were publishing on birds, 'Les Oiseaux'. I went through my negative files and discovered many unprinted negatives in which birds were depicted, including this image which I subsequently titled 'Wanaka Lake Tree, Study 2’.

I have long felt that aesthetic decisions should never be dogmatic, and should always be challenged and doubted. At the time I made the photographs, I was convinced that the tree 'sans oiseaux" was the stronger image. Now I am less sure. Time has a way of playing with one’s emotions and sensibilities.
Our views sometimes change, precisely because we are alive and changeable, which I find immensely reassuring!"

 

~ Michael Kenna

"There had been a raging blizzard during the night. When I awakened in my bed, I looked toward the window to see a magnificent display of frost. Nature’s storm had playfully arranged what seemed to be stationary snowflakes on the pane of glass. Looking through the window and its decoration of frosted crystals. I saw a tree trunk with its branches rhythmically and joyfully dancing as if in celebration of the visual magic that was before my eyes. It was now up to me to quickly arise and to gather my equipment and film to etch all this beauty and magic onto film and silver paper”

 

~Paul Caponigro

“Nothing is ever the same twice because everything is always gone forever, and yet each moment has infinite photographic possibilities.”

~ Michael Kenna

“Being a photographer primarily involves being an observer, and on one particular day, while sipping coffee at the kitchen table, I noticed that the glass door leading out to the porch carried a patina of etched shapes upon it. It was wintertime and the cold of the outdoors meeting the warmth of the kitchen had left shapes like snowflakes and broader patches of frost across the entire pane of glass. The observer in me saw the potential for a picture and so I brought my view camera into the kitchen and played with the image on my ground glass until I created a good composition that exposed the uniqueness of the frost and winter’s handiwork. I focused on the plane carrying the frost and this selective focusing caused any objects behind the frosted glass to be seen as soft -edged and out of focus. A bright light falling on some objects on the porch appeared as a soft cloud in the midst of the frost pattern. In the final print from the negative, I was pleased with the coming together of shapes and tones that created a nebulous space in which mystery and beauty hovered together"

~ Paul Caponigro

“In time I came to realize that good photography was not the result of good technique alone. The expressive print requires emotional depth and not merely dazzle, and can only be artistically effective if the soft-edged realm of emotion is united with hard-edged technical concerns. Much like the ugly duckling’s story, one need await beauty through maturity, and this transition takes photography from a medium of recording to one of transforming. I saw that light, chemistry, film and coated papers were all endowed with the power to release the feeling of magic within the silver print. While working in the field or in my darkroom, I often felt that a complete openness to my subjects and materials brought about the notion that I alone was not making choices, but that the subjects and materials were at times choosing me. The picture making realm has a voice of its own and my primary tool working therein would be the ability to listen to a very pregnant silence”

 

~ Paul Caponigro

“When I'm taking pictures I even forget that I have a camera. When I shoot I forget about everything. Light comes, death comes, people go in and out in costume—and it's like a play.”

 

~ Graciela Iturbide

“In the late 1990’s, I was afflicted with knee problems and had both knees replaced. The surgery was not that difficult, but therapy and exercise did prove to be tedious. As a result, I found it most difficult to heft my 5 x 7 view camera into the field along with the weighty tripod required. It then occurred to me that I could make photographs indoors as well as in the great outdoors. In the field, I often had found sticks, stones and bones that were interesting enough to enjoy in my home, and I began to look at them now as potential subjects for photographs. It was the beginning of a long period of trying to arrange objects well enough to avoid a stilted look. Nature always had her way of presenting her creations with grace and beauty, even within seemingly chaotic views”

 

~ Paul Caponigro

“Photography teaches us to see, and we can see whatever we wish. When I take a photograph, I make a wish. I was always looking for beauty.”

 

~ George Tice

“I seek refuge and simplicity in my photographs and find a personal resolution and fulfillment that I sincerely hope others experience as well.”

 

~ Jeffrey Conley

“Photography's potential as a great image-maker and communicator is really no different from the same potential in the best poetry where familiar, everyday words, placed within a special context can soar above the intellect and touch subtle reality in a unique way"

 

~ Paul Caponigro

“I travelled to Laos at the behest of the photographer Kenro Izu to make photographs which could be used and auctioned to raise funds for his Children’s Hospital there. Over the space of ten days, I photographed Buddhist Temples, the Mekong River and various mountains, trees, and landscapes of this delightfully hospitable country.
Whilst I stayed in Luang Prabang, I would walk from my hotel into town each evening to find something to eat for dinner. One night, on my way home I came across a pond with lotus flowers, closed and asleep for the night. The next morning I was there early to photograph these gorgeous white flowers as they lay open, floating on the water’s surface. This lotus flower was particularly appealing and starkly beautiful: hence I referenced my wife Mamta in the title. A year or so later, somebody kindly pointed out to me that the flower was not a lotus but a water lily!

Apparently, lotus flowers hover six inches above the water, water lilies float. Fortunately, I have an understanding wife and we decided together that it was too late to change the title to Mamta’s Water Lily. What’s in a name anyway!”

 

~ Michael Kenna

“It was along a Kentucky Highway that I was prompted to stop and consider making a photograph of a stand of trees gracing the hillside that more than intrigued me. An inner feeling like “deja vu” convinced me to stop along the road to ponder what was before me and might soon be focused on my camera’s ground glass.

Having one’s attention sharply taken by a simple scene can give a state of inner quiet that helps in understanding more deeply the nature of such an encounter. I had the realization that I had seen, in exact detail this very landscape in one of my dreams prior to physically arriving at this seemingly predetermined place. Time and space had been patiently awaiting my arrival to create a photograph of the world in between. A nebulous and elusive dream space had found it’s way into the solid light of day”

 

~ Paul Caponigro

“I believe that we all have the simple, (and sometimes incredibly complicated), responsibility to live to our highest potential. I bring this belief to my photography, (as well as everything else I do), and it has ensured that there is rarely a moment where I do not feel inspired and passionate.”

 

~ Michael Kenna

“Photography is a medium, a language, through which I might come to experience directly, live more closely with, the interaction between myself and nature.”

 

~ Paul Caponigro

“I believe that photography loves banal objects, and I love the life of objects."

 

~ Josef Sudek

"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

“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