Friday, July 29, 2011

The word beauty is unavoidable … it accounts for my decision to photograph … There appeared a quality, beauty seemed the only appropriate word for it, in certain photographs, and I am compelled to live with the vocabulary of this new sight … through over many years [I] still find it embarrassing to use the word beauty, I fear I will be attacked for it, but I still believe in it. - Robert Adams

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

It’s more important to concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness. Take [William Carlos] Williams: until he was 50 or 60, he was a local nut from Paterson, New Jersey, as far as the literary world was concerned. He went half a century without real recognition except among his friends and peers.
“You say what you want to say when you don’t care who’s listening. If you’re grasping to get your own voice, you’re making a strained attempt to talk, so it’s a matter of just listening to yourself as you sound when you’re talking about something that’s intensely important to you.”
 

Friday, July 22, 2011

Favorite Photography Books #3

Family
by Lee Friedlander
Text by Maria Friedlander
This book collects Lee Friedlander's personal photos of his family starting in the early 1950s and going through 2000. While they all have the stamp of Friedlander's style they are much more intimate and subjective than the work we are accustomed to seeing. The layout of the book is by subject and somewhat chronological and is presented as if it was anyone's family album. A very complete, tender visual narrative emerges (with the help of Maria's text). We see the children growing, his wife aging, the family getting larger and all of the sharing and love that goes with it. But like any family album the questions abound secrets are kept hidden. A beautiful book by one of America's great artists.