That depends a lot on timing. Not the interruption of the time/space continuum and the moment of exposure. The timing of one’s career.
When I was a working photojournalist, if a photo did not have a person in it, it was not photojournalism. It was just photo. No journalism. I was pretty black and white in my blacks and whites.
I am a slow learner. Ask any of my elementary or high school teachers. It’s as if all I have learned has been shown to me through the lens of my camera. Not a bad way to live, I suppose.
How did I get so rigid in what I knew as photojournalism? Never photograph the backs’ of people… that edict. It was that sort of thing that took me far from my roots in photography which was, and is returning to, the chasing of light and its truth and beauty.
Never photograph backs?
That completely eliminates the beautiful portrait Yousuf Karsh made in 1954 of Pablo Casals. As Karsh put it…
“I was so moved on listening to him play Bach that I could not, for some moments, attend to photography. I have never photographed anyone, before or since, with his back turned to the camera, but it seemed to me just right.”
(LinkedIn)
It was just another early morning on the Corso Cavour in Orvieto when I arrived at this chair in the middle of the street. I was so moved by its form and the light-play on the seat that I just had to… commit art. So I did.
My heart grew bigger as my mind became more flexible. I can claim such and yet, prove neither. But it seemed to me just right. And possibly…
I might just be adding a bit of gray to my blacks and whites of my black and white.
I leave you with Chair, Corso Cavour, Orvieto
