Out of Context ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone
(embiggenable) • iPhone
(embiggenable) • iPhone
PLEASE EXCUSE MY ABSENCE FROM BLOGGING CUZ, OVER THE PAST WEEK, I HAVE BEEN preoccupied with hoping for a ray of sunshine to appear. My desire for a ray of sunshine was for a more figuative than literal ray of sunshine but I am more than pleased that my hoped for outcome appeared in both ways.
That written, I have, nevertheless, been making pictures, literal ray-of-sunshine wise, during the past week (as well as other referents). And, for one reason or another, a quote from John Szarkowski crepted into my mind:
"One might compare the art of photography to the act of pointing. It must be true that some of us point to more interesting facts, events, circumstances, and configurations than others. [...] The talented practitioner of the new discipline would perform with a special grace, sense of timing, narrative sweep, and wit, thus endowing the act not merely with intelligence, but with that quality of formal rigor that identifies a work of art, so that we would be uncertain, when remembering the adventure of the tour, how much our pleasure and sense of enlargement had come from the things pointed to and how much from a pattern created by the pointer." - John Szarkowski
FYI, many might know of John Szarkowski as the legendary MOMA curator and photo critic but not be aware of the fact that he was a damn good picture maker. I have the book, John Szarkowski ~ Photographs, which is, iMo, an amazing retrospective of his work. In addition to the photographs, the book is interspersed with a significant amount of his personal correspondence which elucidates many of his ideas about the medium and its apparatus.
The book is so amazing that, in fact, if I were banished to a tiny desert island and allowed to take only one photo book, Szarkowski's book is the book I would take.
Very highly recommended.