ONE OF THE PHOTO BLOGS / SITES I VISIT EVERY DAY, even though on most days it features Academic Lunatic Fringe photography, is LENSCRATCH. However, every once and awhile it features that which might be labeled as straight photography. Today's featured work is one such occasion.
It is no secret that I believe that amateur snapshots might just be at the top of the heap, re: what the medium of photography and its apparatus is capable of achieving. That is, pure and honest, un-affected seeing. And, the work featured on LENSCRATCH today is a perfect example of such.
Two items in the LENSCRATCH entry caught my attention: first was the comment by the site's founder / editor, Aline Smithson, which stated:
...There is a glorious authenticity to the photographs...
That statement fairly concisely sums up my feeling about snapshots. Which is precisely the reason I could be labeled as a casual collector of snapshots.
The second item that captured my attention was a statement by the snapshot maker:
I began scanning the negatives, cleaning them up, and making archival digital prints. I was flooded with memories, but more importantly, to my surprise, I found that they show a remarkable consistency of vision as a body of work .... The images provide clues to how I looked at the world as a child. I realize there are many similarities to how I view the world today.
The reason that statement struck a chord with me is that I can write, without any doubt, that if I were to put together a random assortment of my personal "fine art" work, which included a couple prints made during the first 6 months of my picture making, no one would, if challenged to do so, be able to identify those pictures as much older examples of my work.
I believe that to be true because I see the world and picture it today in exactly the same manner I did back then (c. 1968). That is, I simply make pictures of what I see. Not, as Brook Jensen has written, of what I have been told is a good picture.
I did not pickup a camera until during my 18th year on the planet. Prior to that time I had no paricualar interest in making or viewing photographs (other than as seen in general interest magazines or other publications). I was mercifully free of any knowledge of or expections to conform to conventional picture making norms. My M.O. was, literally, have camera, see something, don't think, just point and shoot. Which is exactly how I make pictures today.
To be a bit more precise, that M.O. is baked into my seeing-and always has been-and picture making pysche. I picture by "feel". That is, I see something that picks my eye, point my picture making device and "organize" the visual elements of that something within the frame I impose on my chosen segnment of the world in a manner that just "feels" right to my eye and sensibilities.
That M.O., from picture making day one, is what earned me the position to be a full-time photographer-in the US Army without any training-within 6 months of picking up a camera. It earned me a career of making advertising / marketing pictures for Fortune 500 corporations (and others) and editorial pictures for magazines and professional publications. And, throughout my life (especially the past 20 years), making personal "fine art" pictures which have been accepted / exhibited in group gallery shows (many worldwide "competitions") and in at least 10 solo gallery exhibitions.
All of that written, here's the thing ... I am fortunate to have been "given" what seems to me to be a preternatural "gift" for "seeing". A "gift" that I can't really explain. It just is. Consequently, I can, as the NIKE slogan states, just do it.
