I’m the Decider

calla 2, photograph
“Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”
- Howard Aiken
One of the most important phases in the process of making art is that of editing. By this I mean the decision what to do with a new work. I’m intentionally skipping past the prior step, which is [...]

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Don’t Pass Up the Chance

liquid gold, photograph
“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and will be lost.”
- Martha Graham
I don’t think I’ve [...]

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Out with the Old and In with the New

The Weary Traveller, photograph
“People are very open-minded about new things – as long as they’re exactly like the old ones.”
- Charles F. Kettering
There is a new wave of innovation going on in the photography world known as HDR – stands for High Dynamic Range. I won’t bore you with the technical details. The reason I [...]

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Choose Your Weapon

Enflamed, photograph
“If Velasquez were born today, he would be a photographer and not a painter.”
- George Bernard Shaw
I wonder whether painters from long ago would have chosen different, not-then-available art mediums. It’s curious to contemplate what kind of photographs Rembrandt or Vermeer might have taken had the camera rather than the brush been their chosen [...]

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Visiting Old Friends

Shadowed, photograph
“No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.”
- George Eliot
I’m very aware of this statement with regard to literature – books I found compelling, even life changing, 30 years ago when I first read them can seem curiously [...]

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The Broken Mirror

Boxed In, photograph
“A photograph is only a fragment, and with the passing of time it’s moorings become unstuck.”
- Susan Sontag
More thoughts inspired by On Photography by Susan Sontag…
Sontag talks about the discreteness of a photograph and the effect of that on how we see things. Photographs become untethered from the stream of time they came from. [...]

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What’s New?

Webbed, photograph
“We tend to think things are new because we’ve just discovered them.”
- Madeleine L’Engle
I wonder whether artists 100 years ago found it easier to believe they were being creative in a unique way? These days it is so easy to see the art of others.
Thousands of individual websites, blogs, online galleries, social networking art [...]

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Mental Pollution

Backdoor, photograph
“Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy.”
- Susan Sontag
I’m reading Sontag’s seminal work “On Photography” and finding it thought provoking.
She is making a point here that our photograph-dominated culture has created a view of social reality that is a series of unrelated anecdotes, undermining a sense of [...]

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Man vs. Machine

Abstract I, photograph
“Anyone who can be replaced by a machine deserves to be.”
- Dennis Gunton
A visitor to my studio last weekend made the observation that photography had become much easier and faster with the advent of the computer and digital imaging.
Needless to say, I didn’t let that one pass…
Technology is usually an enabler, rarely an [...]

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All Too Familiar

Apochrypha, photograph
“Art is not to be found by touring to Egypt, China, or Peru; if you cannot find it at your own door, you will never find it.”
- Emerson
Well, that’s a relief, given that it’s unlikely that I’ll go to any of those places.
You see, I don’t like to travel, hate getting on planes, can’t [...]

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