#Trees

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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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"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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“Everything inside the frame is equally important”

 

~ Pentti Sammallahti

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"I put my secrets, hopes and concerns in my work. The subject matter and formal concerns of color, light and frame has always been the device to get to the story itself. I want my photographs to be a jolt. They explore a magic in the world while having one foot very much placed in reality."

 

~ 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 think I was shy as a young woman and realized that photography was an ideal way to of expressing myself, of telling people what was going on without having to talk”

 

~ Martine Franck
(1938-2012)

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“When nature is present we don’t recognize that it’s there. However when it’s gone or changed in some way, only then do we realize that it has been around. In other words, only at the moment of loss are memories restored”

~ Byung Hun Min

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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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“I first came to Somerset in 1940. I was sent here as an evacuee during the Second World War. I was five when I arrived at Frome station wearing a gas mask, hand in hand with my three year old sister. We were selected for the same beautiful village, Norton St Philip, but we were separated. My sister went to the big house, while I went to a farm laborers home. We had come from a family living in poverty amid the violence of Finsbury Park. I’ve always held onto those childhood memories of streams snaking through hazel trees and cows standing in the grass looking lost. Somerset was yeoman farmer’s country with hedged fields that looked like quilted blankets and hedgerows covered in buttercups”

 

~ Don McCullin

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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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“There was no such thing as a photography galleries in the 1930’s. Photography was not considered collectable works of art in those days”

 

~ Wolfgang Suschitzky
(1912-2016)

 

 

“It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place, it is not agreeable or cheerful or easy or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent"

 

~ Oscar Wilde

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"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

"If still images had embedded sound tracks, while observing this image we might hear hooper swans, plaintively calling out for their breakfast, embracing the chilly early morning stillness of Kussharo Lake, and preparing for the day ahead. The dawn mist has just cleared, distant mountains have become visible, snow still clings to the tree branches, and I am doing what I love to do, walking, observing, exploring, photographing, and welcoming another delicious Hokkaido experience."

 

~ Michael Kenna

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“As fathers, we need to be involved in our children’s lives not just when it’s convenient or easy, and not just when they’re doing well — but when it's difficult and thankless, and they’re struggling. That is when they need us most.”

~Barack Obama

"As a photographer, one might, if very fortunate, be commissioned to photograph in a location that would otherwise be difficult to access. Such was the case in 2006 when Traveler Magazine kindly asked me to spend a week on Mt. Koya, (aka Koya San), the Honshu mountain top headquarters of the Shingon Buddhist sect. I stayed in a different residential temple every night, sleeping on tatami floors and dining on vegetables, roots and nuts. I photographed monks and pilgrims, inside and outside of temples, sand gardens, stone lanterns, tombstones in the ancient Okunoin graveyard, and the surrounding landscape. I experienced exquisite Buddhist rituals and services. The whole experience was thrilling and life changing.

This photograph of a Lotus Pond next to the Henjouson Temple was made one very early, pre-dawn morning. The light was soft and quiet, as if the day was just waking up from a deep sleep. The exposure was perhaps twenty minutes, so the water becomes a sort of mist, swirling around the one central point where water sprays into the air. I remember birds singing and monks chanting. Occasional figures walked by, across the bridge, but the long exposure ensured they dissolved and become invisible."

 

~ Michael Kenna

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“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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“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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"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"

 

~ Jeffrey Conley

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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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“Our way of life is strongly dependent on the cycle and rhythm of the seasons, the movement of the tides and the phases of the moon”

 

~ Paul Cupido

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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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“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

“The great French photographer, Eugene Atget, spent many years photographing the gardens in and around Paris designed by the landscape architect André Le Nôtre in the 17th century. Early in my career, I followed in the footsteps of Atget to see where and how he photographed. I explored the formal estates of Versailles, Saint Cloud, Sceaux, Vaux-le-Vicomte and the Tuileries, amongst others, before finding Marly-le-Roi. Pools of water, fountains, rows of topiaried hedges and perspective illusions were the hallmark of Le Nôtre. This photograph, albeit maybe designed long after Le Nôtre, typifies an aspect of his landscapes - the unexpected. Through a forest of trees a circle appears, for no apparent reason. I’ve long felt that questions were far more interesting than answers. and this circle continues to intrigue me. Someday, I may find out what it is or what it is used for. Or maybe I won’t.”

 

~ 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

“There is an orchestra outside my window”

 

~ Cig Harvey

“Photography is for me a kind of meditation which widens my perception of the existing and evolving world around us. I seek refuge and simplicity in my photographs; and I find in it a personal accomplishment that I sincerely hope others too can feel.”

 

~ Jeffrey Conley

"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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"A good picture knows how to communicate the emotion that created it."

 

~ Willy Ronis
( 1910 - 2009 )

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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

“We are only beginning to learn what to say in a photograph. The world we live in is a succession of fleeting moments, anyone of which might say something significant”

 

~ Alfred Eisenstaedt

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“I believe a lot in instinct. One should never dull it by wanting to know everything. One shouldn't ask too many questions but do what one does properly, never rush, and never torment oneself.”

 

~ Josef Sudek

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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 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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"My artistic eye is black and white. I'm used to seeing and visualizing in black and white and have only one way of taking pictures."

 

~ Gianni Berengo Gardin

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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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“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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“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 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

“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

“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

“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

“Everything inside the frame is equally important”

 

~ Pentti Sammallahti

"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

“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 camera for an artist is just another tool. It is no more mechanical than a violin if you analyze it. Beyond the rudiments, it is up to the artist to create art, not the camera.”

 

~ Brett Weston
(1911-1993)

“Give me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling”

~ Walt Whitman
(1819-1892)

“I like to get to know trees intimately. I spend a lot of time walking around them trying to become acquainted with them. In fact, it’s as though I talk to them.”

 

~ Michael Kenna

“I am a lucky man. I can do something with almost anything I see. Everything is still interesting to me"

~ André Kertész

“For all of us, the Earth sustains our existence. In an otherwise in hospitable known universe, our little blue planet provides us with absolutely everything. I’ve never understood why our societal and spiritual priorities as a species do not overwhelmingly demonstrate our gratitude by placing our planet at the pinnacle of the reverential order”

 

~ Jeffrey Conley

“A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense and is thereby a true expression of what one feels about life in it’s entirety. And the expression of what one feels should be set forth in terms of simple devotion to the medium - a statement of the utmost clarity and perfection possible under the conditions of creation and production”

~Ansel Adams
(1902-1984)

“Ansel Adams was one of the great photographers of this century. He was also one of the best loved spokespersons for the obligations we owe to the natural world. It has been easy to confuse the related but distinct achievements that earned him these twin honors. Although he devoted a lifetime to the cause of wilderness preservation, Adams did not photograph the landscape as a matter of social service but as a form of private worship. It was his own soul that he was trying to save. His great work was done under the stimulus of a profound and mystical experience of the natural world”

John Szarkowski
(1925 - 2007)