Why I Photograph
Nowadays everyone is a photographer. Never before have most people carried cameras around with them all the time. Capable cameras, too. Everyone has to be a photographer these days since selfies are a main social media currency—we don’t just go to see the National Parks, we go to be seen seeing them. Dishes are rushed out of restaurant kitchens only to languish for photos. Thanks to perpetual practice and the enhancements rendered by modern cell phone cameras, it turns out many of us are pretty good photographers.
I don’t dismiss this style of casual photography as mundane. Worthy documentation and curation imperatives still loom large. After all people don’t just want to be in photos, they want to look good in them and they want the entire scene to look good. Care is taken with outfits, lighting, backgrounds, and poses. A high-volume approach is likely to yield at least some satisfying results, so many go at it with zeal, no matter if they’re blocking the aisles of the cathedral, or others’ view of the painting or concert, or if their meal grows cold.
Besides the selfies and the obligatory depiction of everyday life, kids occupy our viewfinders like never before, and many a future biographer will be surfeited with source material. And, since it’s easier to take a photo of something than to make a note or describe in text, photography as a practical means of duplicating and storing information has a prominent place. (One might argue that this sort of photography, along with texting, contributes to the diminution of our culture’s verbal imperatives, but that’s for another essay.)
In this new churn of prolific and democratic image-making the verb to snap has never been so apt. But let us not forget that some cell phone photographers are more aspirational. They record life’s deeper or more important moments, and some rise to artistic practice. Photos taken with cell phones grace gallery walls, enliven our glossiest publications, drive our online obsessions. Entire first-run movies are these days shot with cell phones.
But most of these everyday images are not art. Many merely gratify the self. Why do some like me lug actual cameras and alternate lenses around? Today’s generalized practice of photography raises new questions about the value of the medium to add to the never-answered old ones, such as, could fortuitous images grabbed instantly out of the ether ever be art? After all, isn’t a photograph a record, a mere duplication, of reality? Can a xerox copy be more important than an original? Now, as digital images, photographs are in a sense even more ephemeral. They are not renderings of material substance but rather a mysterious collection of code.
And so many are taken! Even a child or an ape can stumble upon a stunning photograph, begging the question: Is an accidental great photo worthy if there is no artistic intentionality behind it?
Well, of course it is. We shouldn’t hold it against photography that it is the easiest and most accessible art form ever. A great image, whether it’s a hand-pulled platinum print on archival paper or a mere digital tic, is a great image and that’s that. Ah, but what is a great image? While I’m surprised at how the definition ever expands even in an instant within my own viewfinder, I’ll try to answer that—at least for me.
I was first drawn to taking pictures because Nepal, where I was sent as a Peace Corps Volunteer, was so visually interesting. Everything I saw, the culture, scenery, architecture, animals, etc., smacked my gob. Everyday Nepal offered scenes so distinctive and vivid as to be an assault on my sensibilities, which were tender, especially at first. My eyes would get tired of looking so hard. They were bedazzled by “the wildest dreams of Kew.” Within my available apprehension the majesty of the Himalaya, the sexiness of women’s bare midriffs, the color and clutter of the marketplace, the gaudiness of kingfishers, the delicacy of carvings on 15th century pagodas, etc., couldn’t be perceived in any sort of casual, straightforward way.
Indeed the part of me that normally would have registered the visual environment was constantly on the verge of being overwhelmed by this overload, not to mention culture shock, illness, job dissatisfaction, etc. I simply didn’t have the bandwidth in any given moment to truly confront my surroundings and behold their specialness. In the early days, when I attempted photos I did so at a remove because even though I wasn’t yet integral with the place and thus able to parse it visually I knew it was worthy of my precious Kodachrome. Photographing without fully seeing was a way to buffer reality, to bookmark it, and thus procrastinate my reckoning. It was doing something when I hardly knew what to do.
Later, as I grew more comfortable with the culture and more knowing, I sought out its features and tried to record them. However, my catalogue of images from my village, the place I made my home for two years, is lacking because while there I was loath to use my expensive camera for fear of being perceived as an ostentatious tourist. To an extent, I was trying to live like the villagers did. When I trekked in the mountains, and especially when I traveled to Kathmandu, I found my métier.
Still today, it’s travel that excites me visually and compels me to take photos. And I mean take photos—hundreds a day is commonplace when I’m walking around in a city. This is remarkably profligate when you consider that after Nepal I eventually committed to the medium, went to art school, and learned large-format photography. Back then each shot was the result of a deliberate, careful process that might take 15 minutes to set up. This is because I shot individual sheets of 4X5 film with a bulky view camera on a tripod, using a light meter for calculation of exposure, and focusing with a loupe on the ground glass at the back of the camera. An image was a precious hand-made thing, even if limited to black and white (and all the marvelous tones in between).
Which is the better method: shooting furiously or contemplatively? I won’t answer that because they both work, although I’m glad I had the prior training with the view camera. I believe every shot I now take draws from the studied seeing and framing that once went on as I deliberated whether to invest in a shot. As Dorothea Lange, who used a slightly more agile but still process-heavy 4X5 Graflex, said, “The camera is an instrument that teaches people to see without a camera.” In many cases, paradoxically, the view camera offered the advantage in composition of an upside-down and vague image. But I believe I still see in today’s small OM-1 viewfinder how gross forms balance in empty space to fill the frame or provide borders. And lacking a color palette in the past probably made me ever more sensitive today to gradations of light—and more eager to embrace bold color.
Nowadays, how I love having lots of images to review after a busy day of shooting, even though many unworthy ones are instantly deleted. I may even come upon shots I don’t remember making. And ones taken almost inadvertently may turn out to be wonders. Of course there are disappointments too. But there is a freshness that comes from photos taken from the hip. I have tried to cultivate a hair trigger finger on the shutter button in anticipation of, for example, a bicycle flying into the frame, eye contact, or a smile. I don’t generally rely on multi-frame bursts, but that too is an option for capturing a fleeting moment. In addition to the sort of conscious preparation which includes preselecting an f-stop and focus range, I believe that at times I am capable of seeing in the moment in an almost mystical way, i.e., without registering particular objective information but rather sensing the gestalt of a photo. I aspire to have the eyes of Flaubert who wrote, “I derive almost voluptuous sensations from the mere act of seeing,” and thus at times feel privy to be in a zone of heightened awareness that is magical and at times gives me the feeling that I’m getting away with something illicit.
Which gets me to a notion advanced by Jonathan Swift: “Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.” Photographers, whether or not they have something to say, are keen and careful observers. They isolate what is special in the visual environment. They pay attention, and, as Simeone Weil reminds us, “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.” When photographing in a rich environment I often find myself communing with the external world in a way that is, if not religious, at least exultant. I am not just seeing—I am not just thriving—I am communicating with the verities.
Hiro is more particular: “If you look into the camera and you see something you recognize, don’t click the shutter.” To me his is an extreme and problematic view, though no doubt he is a better photographer than I am. I just know that when things come together in my vision, and then in my viewfinder, in a way that jives with my aesthetic, I recognize it immediately and I click away (though my shutter is always set to silent). Likewise, I suspect that the great Walker Evans combed such trademark subjects as vernacular architecture, commercial signs, and industrial detritus, and “knew” an Evans as soon as he saw it. Not only did he recognize a photo, in the act of making it with such loving care he exalted his subjects.
Evans and other documentary photographers helped expand the photographic canon. They opened up a range of new, meaningful subjects, presenting them with a stark clarity. If Evans hesitated from pushing the button when he saw a photo that others might take, it’s because he wanted his image to convey the truth rather than romantic gloss. Objects took on new meaning when photographed by him. As James Agee said about his partner: He captured “the cruel radiance of what is.”
Evans and company demonstrated that an icon, or a glaringly obvious eye-catching object, does not necessarily make a good photo, although it can. And, in another contradiction, studies of art can also be art (Richard Avedon’s fashion and celebrity portraits rise to that level). But Rilke advised in his Letters to a Young Poet, “Study the small and humble things of the world.” That is the foundation of the photography that moves me, although the gaudy and brash have a place in my viewfinder too. Do you see how hard it is to be categorical about what makes a good photo?
When I was an earnest young photographer trying to break into the D.C. fine art market, I went to see a notable local photographer to show him my work. He praised my technique but wondered what I was trying to say. That is, he didn’t see a consistent point of view or a unified style. He reacted to what I had shown him as just pictures—well executed but unrelated singularities and therefore lacking in significance. I was dashed at his lack of enthusiasm, and I’m still not sure about his point. I understand that the more a photographer explores a certain topic or refines a style, the more significant and impactful the work can become. I say “can become” because wonderful photos can also be single images apart from a photographer’s holistic oeuvre. But I also think the approach of working a topic or pursuing a model can produce boring photographs. My would-be mentor is known for a book-length treatment of a small pond which, in my opinion, foregoes striking images in favor of mood and sheer comprehension. A museum curator gives him credit for “grace and elegance in even the most mundane of places.”
It’s true that my subject matter was and is all over the place, and I am anything but dogmatic about what constitutes a good photograph. I am eclectic by nature. I routinely read books on my Kindle that my wife has purchased and shared on our joint account. Especially when I’m looking for a new book in the middle of a sleepless night, I tend to be open-minded and I trust her taste. I of course have my own favorite authors and styles of writing, but there is something to be said for venturing into mysterious literature. What does that say about my integrity as a reader and thinker—my ability to pursue my own truth? I would argue it makes me better versed, so to speak, and more capable. In another example, modern comedians are often identified by styles and themes, but does that mean that old-timers like Bob Hope, who delivered a mixed assortment of jokes, weren’t also funny? Are lesser artists? What if I eat of various cuisines, dress from a varied wardrobe, listen to a mixed playlist? Am I therefore lacking integrity and diluted? Or am I richer from variety?
As to my style or message, I can only let my photos speak for themselves. Perhaps my work should rightfully be dismissed as superficial and/or confused. But I maintain that it’s not just the body of work but the practice of the medium—the refined act of mechanical seeing—that is the art of photography, and that my philosophy of taking pictures is worthy. A good photo is like a good joke. It doesn’t need to be in a sequence of labored relatives.
On the other hand I admit that a steady, deep study can be rewarding. I did it for almost two years when I photographed D.C.’s storefront churches. I was moved to write an essay on the subject, and the Library of Congress bought a portfolio of 12 of the photos. Taken together the images yield a hallow quality that transcends the baseness of the edifices. A single photo of one church is not as powerful as the set of them, to be sure, but in this case it is salient that these churches exist in profusion and that they have delicious variety as to architectural adaptations, inventive names, and symbols. In multiples they covey a power. But I still say most of my photos are good as single images.
There are many master photographers who treat a subject that might be dismissed as a cliche with such assurance and interpretive verve so as to create a sublime work. Weston’s photo of a toilet represents masterly seeing. And when Ansel Adams came upon a scene of dramatic Western beauty, he rose above postcard photography. He simply rendered a scene with such commanding artistic sensibility that he set new standards for seeing and photographing nature. And the key wasn’t merely in the rendering, although the use of large negatives exposed in accordance with his zone system constituted astute technique. Adams worked hard to incorporate all the factors of weather, light, viewpoint, animals, etc., into his vision to create sublime images. One can only imagine how hard he trekked, how cold and tired he got, how lonely, how worried. His story of quickly photographing the crosses in Hernandez, New Mexico, in the last rays of the sun proves how diligence and awareness combine in his genius. Recently, at Grand Teton National Park, I stood where Adams had when he made one of his iconic images, and I hesitated to take up my camera. It seemed insolent.
I often demur at nature photographs—not just because Adams can’t be beat but because I am drawn instead to civilization. So I readily photographed a building in Alabama that Walker Evans had shot when I came upon it. I had been attempting to barter photographs for a rocking chair, and the Perry County woodworker, a Mr. Lane Latham, said no thanks but told me he’d been watching “ETV the other night” and the program featured an “old boy” who came through there in the 30s and photographed the Sprott store. I knew the photo and the photographer. “Wait a minute,” I said. “That building still exists?” It turned out the store/post office was just up the road. It still stood, as if self-aware of its iconic status. It had been modified over the years, homemade architectural adjustments that Evans himself would have appreciated. How could I not pay homage?
One of my favorite techniques is to find a compelling scene and wait for an equally compelling person or group (or animal)—a grace note of a focal point, perhaps—to appear. I particularly seek photos that distill a complicated visual environment into an ordered, pleasing, or revealing way of seeing. I look for scenes replete with fullness and richness, yet symmetry. I use zoom lenses to fill the frame because I believe life is often crammed into our various schemes and I want it to burst forth in my pictures. It’s mind-expanding to realize that what one may at first dismiss as a jangled and off-putting busyness can take on graceful order if it’s studied or cropped a certain way. A chaotic array can become photographic bricolage. In an essay on the Japanese propensity toward cultivated clutter, Matt Alt writes, “… in a world of obsolescence and homogenized sameness, well-cluttered spaces feel like a declaration of liberation.” I try to see clutter well and even lend it harmony.
The ideal scene would offer its own excitement, even if that meant it was unexpected or unexamined (often the outworn and forlorn call out). It might benefit from early or late warm slanting light, or ominous weather. It may be stark, or busy with information. There may be symmetry, or the severe lack thereof. Further, it may be rife with patterns, or juxtapositions/contradictions/contrasts. It may have play of light, people, color, etc., distinctive markers of time or place, or utter mystery. Often eye contact or an unusual facial expression is key.
Obviously, there is no secret formula for good photography. And we cannot even be guided by truth. “The truth is good, but interesting is better,” according to Christopher Walker. There are many banal photos, which is a relatively new problem because in the early days of photography each image was inherently a marvel. It still has a fascinating quality of putting reality on a grid. It magically arrests time, penetrates complexity, and rivets attention to the smallest detail. It provides irrefutable evidence to support, yet consistently demonstrates the reckless falsity of, the adage that the camera never lies.
Photography can reveal so much, so starkly and so incisively that the “truth” of a photo is that the medium itself is astonishing. Agee thought the camera was “the central instrument” of his age and believed photography alone could transmit “the peculiar kinds of poetic vitality which blaze in every real thing.” When applied to street photography the camera can bring out hidden truths from the confused hubbub of life. It can transform motion into static, pregnant increments. Portraits can be revelatory. “You never know how you look until you get your picture took,” was the clever remark of Simon Broom, father of Sarah M. Broom, author of The Yellow House. Nietzsche was fond of saying “We have art lest we perish from the truth.” In a sense, photography is so interesting as to muddle and distract us from the truth. A photograph placed side-by-side with a “live” scene is often more interesting.
The only possible conclusion is that photography occupies a curious epistemological middle ground. As Margaret Renkl wrote in the New York Times, “a photo can tell the truth about a lie. Or a lie about the truth.” She comments on the famous photo of Whipped Peter, the slave who was beaten severely on his back: “The raised scars in that photograph were undeniable in a way that other accounts of slavery’s brutality, however powerful, had not been. The image tells the truth about slavery ‘in a way that even Mrs. [Harriet Beecher] Stowe can not approach,’ wrote a journalist of the time, ‘because it tells the story to the eye.’” As Dr. Andrew Huberman tells us, the eyes are biologically direct extensions of our brains.
I’m not taken with manipulated photography that plays with our sense of reality. Nowadays, software enables the photographer to completely remove objects or people from an image, or add them, thus recreating a scene that is otherwise rendered in faithful detail. Countless other tampering may be imposed. I may try to enhance a photo or use a filter, but sparingly and only to bring out its essence. What photography does mess with, on its own, is our sense of time. Photos that remind us of how a city looked, what hardship was like, how youth radiated, etc., still resonate, move us, and disrupt our sense of who we are in the present. Everything changes, everything moves, but a photo is a fixed, defiant statement that jars us into a new now.
Saint-Exupéry wrote in The Little Prince that “What is essential is invisible to the eyes,” but for me art, design, and the aura of curated stuff are avenues to the essential. I don’t believe this is a universal way of seeing, but I know I’m wired to honor the direct lines between pupils and consciousness. I constantly search for meaning in the visual environment and achieve a frisson of something like enlightenment even when I arrange my precious curios on a shelf but especially when the elements of a great photo come together in my viewfinder. I truly hate it when I see a wonderful photo and don’t or can’t take it. Many of our road trips, in which we usually have great distances to cover, are marked by my having to cruise by tantalizing prospective photos at 80 mph. I am still haunted by some that I’ve driven past—they are more poignant in my mind’s eye than some of the ones I took.
In Japan two years ago—when I was again culturally adrift—it struck me that my photography is life itself. It’s an attempt at accessing something elusive, the truth. It’s a means to integrate a place and its people and artifacts into not just my aesthetic, but my ken (or in the case of missed photos, a means of reaching out and correcting my shortcomings). It’s even a means of forestalling death or at least prevailing in life. In that culture that was so profoundly different as to slink beneath my powers of reckoning, I felt almost desperate to grab onto bits of reality. The face and upper body of a sumo wrestler was an icon. A busy intersection was a dissection of the body politic. A salesgirl, a karaoke singer on the street, a woman arranging flowers in a cemetery, these subjects were important totems in a wilderness. Certainly in Japan, communing with death is a national pastime. Using my Olympus camera on its home turf I felt I was consecrating precious life. I was reminded of my scramble for solid spiritual ground in Nepal, when a smile for my camera bridged time and tradition and gave me a tangible hold on my surroundings. Photography isn’t just making a record. Recording and remembering are byproducts. Living in the moment is the point.
Can there be too much reality? Susan Sontag looked deeply into the subject, writing that photography can actually be “a way of refusing experience.” She held that a proliferation of photography led to voyeuristic tendencies; it leveled the meaning of events, making them equal; it even fostered anti-interventionism in society. This tendency is understood by Simon Critchley, who reflects on the oppressive onslaught of out current culture and points out that depersonalization and illusion can result in withdrawal from the world into isolation.
This brings me to a hang-up I face: photographing those who are down-and-out or strange. I confess I do photograph bums and those who look outlandish, and not in the Arbusian style of befriending and thus properly representing those of the marginalia. Without thinking, I am likely to photograph Orthodox Jews, Muslim women, Africans in indigenous garb, and others whose clothing stands out just as I would people wearing distinctive uniforms or costumes. Normally, I believe that anyone out in public is not only fair game but that the more distinctive, or weirder, they are, the more they add to the richness of the environment that compels my photography to begin with. Part of being alive in the world, in the moment, is confronting street life in all its lively eccentricity and even wretchedness. But I recently demurred photographing a person who was either asleep, dead, or passed out on the landing of a Brooklyn subway station. He was so disheveled and desperate-looking that I couldn’t do it, even though the setting, his splayed posture, and the detritus around him made for a compelling image. This was a rare moment of conscience, or perhaps confusion, for me. I suddenly thought there should be limits to photographing those who wouldn’t want to be subjects, even if I offer assistance or leave a handout. It’s an arrant invasion on my part. On the other hand, I’m ruthless when it comes to documenting derelict buildings and other expressions of pathos. If the dignity of a man is strained by the situation I witnessed, that’s a subject that needs to be examined and interrogated. Or does it, if my photo will not effectively have that redeeming result? Whether I’d come upon the same scene and hesitate again I don’t know. It will likely always be a dilemma for me. The image is often the main thing.
This raises the existential question of how my going around and snapping photos matters. What do my little takes on life matter next to yours? Where does this place me in society? As one cultivates a personal aesthetic one tends to withdraw from the world. Documenting my reality is often a solipsistic exercise that says, I see things this way, different from you, more acutely than you. And as long as I can continue to find “my” photos, I can be separate and carve my own path through this confusing, alien, out-of-control world. I am thus oblivious and highly attuned at the same moment. The downside of this is that when I miss a photo I have lost a connection to life and wasted a moment. I suddenly feel more unmoored. Plus, as noted above, I can treat pitiful people as objects.
Even a realized photo is a moment lost as much as it is a moment captured. In documenting the world, I eliminate it, or at least file it away in bits for future consumption. Sigrid Nunez makes the point in The Friend that memories of travel are often only memories of photos taken. She writes, “In the end, writing and photography probably destroy more of the past than they ever preserve of it.” To extend that notion further, am I really there in a foreign place as I look for photos? Or is the life around me a distraction from my art—so much clutter that I am continually culling from consciousness in order to find the rare “keeper” of an image?
There are so many observations to be made about the nature and scope of photography, and most of mine unfortunately aren’t original, but the question remains: Why do I photograph? I am thrilled that I have discovered, through photography, my superpower: a resonant form of seeing that is both seeking and enlightening. Rather than create art from scratch, I am more than content to use a camera to study my surroundings and to grasp enduring meaning from the ordinary people, scenes, and artifacts of life. I realize I am far from being unique in this practice.
Why does a picture jump out at me? What is it about a particular scene that merits recording? I’ve already spoken of some of the components of a good photo, and I could ramble further but never be definitive. I’ve learned to not impose my vision, but to try to expand it. I want to be surprised at what I may come across, and it’s not just a matter of looking. It’s a matter of feeling too. Not to get too mystical, but it often seems a seraphic process. In a moment of clarity and satisfaction I feel that there is something worthy before me, something that plugs me into the universe in an intimate, keen way, something that needs to be contemplated and organized into a photo and finally integrated into my being. Wyatt Mason said that Cormac McCarthy could “write with such clarity of vision that he could add to the stock of available reality. That’s what I sometimes, if rarely, think that I’m about.
And it’s not always the various components of a photo that make it worthy. It may not be anything obvious within the frame. It may be a mood, a look from the eyes, a quality of light. Diane Arbus, who trafficked in hidden meanings, said, “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.”
Common cliche-ridden photography is a tiresome bane. I’m guilty too of photographing dead birds, sunsets, and couples walking on a beach. When I recognize a “Take Kodak picture here” aesthetic creeping into my vision, I try to put down my camera. I’ve come across a quote from photographer Rod Lawton that struck me, because I might have said it myself: “…I’ve grown to realize that I’m not drawn to ‘beauty’ in the same way that most photographers seem to be. I’m more drawn to the dramatic, theatrical, graphic and abstract. I find beauty in lines of force, balanced masses and shapes, the power of light, and the underlying strangeness (as I see it) of the world we live in.” I find it hard to explain why certain of what I think are my best photos are basically compositions. Yet they can be so perfectly harmonious, interesting, or mysterious that they seem as if I had virtuosically brushed them onto canvas. And the viewer, if he or she is open and aligned with my way of seeing, notches a revelation: “Ah, this is a reality that I’ve been missing.”
For some, photography might be a mere skill set, but I hope I am motivated by something nobler. Don’t get me wrong, I’m having fun and I’m driven by a hunger to photograph that is elemental. But as I consider my life’s output, I realize I seek transcendence. I’ve hinted at it with words like “radiance” and “voluptuousness.” I know that a photo can be an object of ardor, an icon if it’s good, and thus a vehicle to a satisfying gospel (“good news”). It’s clearly more significant than a mere representational process should permit.
A good photo amazes. It’s a wonder that ennobles our world and allows it to shine with a light that pierces us. It helps us to fix meditational moments and bring a confused and menacing world into our ken. It calls up universal symbols and meanings to create a communion. Some of my own images, whether or not they supplant reality, bend the truth, evoke mystery, are cheeky, abstract, or caught on the fly, are to me potent love objects. Like memories of falling for a woman, views of natural wonder, or a last-minute Alabama gridiron win, they are, to me, shining examples of why I love life and the world outside of me.
And it’s important to link to the great world outside of me. I wish I could use my aesthetic sensibilities to bring attention to problems and help address them, but for now I’m resigned to selfishly making what passes for art. But my photography reminds me that I’m intrinsic to something that otherwise tends to subsume me. I care deeply for the world and all its elements, no matter how humble and overlooked, and I do my little part to add value to them. Thus, paradoxically, my photos both ground me and raise me up. In the end I photograph because I am expressing who I am and what I, like no other, can see. The material is right before us, but so seldom exalted. In this way, though it is surprising to me, a supreme self-doubter and a wary perfectionist, to admit it, I inch toward loving myself.