Some of the Greats

I once heard some say "Your art will be $h%* it you are not experiencing." Here I am with anger, grief, hatred, love, passion, compassion, and to think I would have nothing to do with it. I am going to take it and go.

Dorthea Lange

"Migrant Mother"

Dorthea Lange believed photography was going to save the world. Her husband asked her "What is it going save the world from?" This is one of the most influential images in the history of the world taken on a not so special day, during a very difficult time. She documented the depression and she said her camera became and appendage. She later wrote her experience while photographing people like you and me forced into such difficult times, "It is difficult to photograph a proud man in a background of poverty."

Richard Avedon

"Dovima with Elephants"

Richard Avedon took photography to an entirely different level, fashion photography quickly left the studio and flooded the streets, mingling with a surreal reality. Avedon spoke, 'The way I see is comparable to the way musicians hear, something extra-sensory. Not judgmental. I don't differentiate between an idea of what is beautiful and what is not. What I see is a reaffirmation of the many things I need to feel. It has to do with obsessive qualities, not explainable. I am a natural photographer. It is my language, I speak through my photographs more intricately, more deeply than with words."

Robert Cappa

Robert Cappa brought us the truth. He had one thing to say that would affect photography forever, "If your pictures are not good enough, you are not close enough." This photograph was taken next to a man just shot, in mid fall, ending his life. Cappa was right there, right next time him.

Diane Arbus

"Crying"
and sometimes how i feel

Diane Arbus began photographing after her husband taught her the art, and they tag teamed some of New Yorks 5th Ave. fashion, creating very brilliant images together. Their success was there, but something was missing for her, she needing something else and she insisted she could no longer photograph. Her husband told her to go home and figure out what she did want to photograph and after serious contemplation she realized she wanted to photograph what was "evil." Her photography however, eludes a sense of the "forbidden" instead of "evil." She kept a diary containing hundreds of pages of what she would photograph if it were acceptable, things she saw everyday. In our culture it would be inappropriate to photograph our crying child, we save our rolls of film for little Johnny when he is building his sand castle at the beach; we would never photograph his reaction when the tide comes in and his creation is washed away. She later expressed, "My favorite place to go is where I have never been."