The Art of Photography

Permit me a slight, but relevant detour. I would like to talk very briefly of a gentleman named Ansel Adams. A photographer who shot on cumbersome large format cameras, turned developing images into an art form, and who achieved the greatest fame for his extraordinary pictures of Yosemite National Park.

I place this image of him here in almost certain breach of numerous copyrights:

In Yosemite Valley the Adams family (not that one, grow up) run a small gallery showcasing original photographs. I only just manage to keep the AmEx in my pocket. But one thing in that gallery completely blows me away. It stops me dead in my tracks, more than any image I have ever seen. From a photographer, a rare commodity - words:

To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things. Impression is not enough. Design, style, technique - these too are not enough. Art must reach further than impression or self-revelation. Art, said Alfred Stieglitz, is the affirmation of life. And life; or its eternal evidence, is everywhere.

Some photographers take reality as the sculptors take wood and stone and upon it impose the dominations of their own thought and spirit. Others come before reality more tenderly and a photograph to them is an instrument of love and revelation. A true photograph need not be explained, nor can be contained in words.

Expressions without doctrine, my photographs are presented here as ends in themselves, images of the endless moments of the world. I dedicate them to the memory of Alfred Stieglitz.

There's not a lot to add to that. Every time you raise the camera to your eye, you have the opportunity to scratch beneath the surface.