Showing at Site #6: CINC – Creative in Common
I follow my eye and sensibility, not styles or compositional rules. Camera in hand, I explore and photograph what catches my eye.
Using my father’s camera, I began making B& W gelatin-silver film prints in my Brooklyn-basement darkroom in 1961. I still enjoy making darkroom prints. I seek to reflect my sense of awe, beauty, interest and wonderment at what first captured my attention. photograph visual order in our disordered world. Visually striking images are almost everywhere, if you are alert to them. Fortunately, I have found them in many places. I see form and composition through my camera lens, record the image on film, and create my photos.
I like to share what I have seen and find exciting. I hope that others, too, will see things that surprise and excite them when least expected. The unexpected and variable mixture that goes into a photograph is all around us, wonderful to discover.
While I photograph much that catches my eye as interesting, my focus is street photography and landscapes, both done “on the fly”. Mostly, I do not “preconceive” a photo before taking it. Rather, I see something worthwhile, raise my camera, and press the shutter. Fortunately, I compose quickly. And when, in the darkroom, I want to crop or make other adjustments (for instance, burning, dodging, adjusting contrast, reversing a negative, or making a negative print, all for visual effect, I do so readily.
Usually, my photographs are untitled. Photographs should stand on their own. I prefer to look at photos without being directed by titles to particular viewpoints about them. And I leave my viewers with the same basis, open to form their own perceptions and to take from the photos what they find in them. My own viewpoint is embedded in the photographs themselves.
