I’m back from my travels to Greece. It was fun. Sometimes even with a mild extreme: getting bounced wall to wall in a storm in a small ferry, fighting with a burglar in the middle of the night, and my all time favorite - driving on narrow winding roads with a stone wall on one side and bottomless ravine on the other side. Santorini was the most beautiful island of all we have been to. It is a crown jewel of all Greek islands. It is worth forgetting about other islands and going to Santorini only. I made quite a few photos: over 10,000 in fact. I wish I could have spent more time on photography there, but I unashamedly wasted my time on a beach and simply enjoyed the view without viewfinder. Sorting and developing my photos from the trip will take some time and I will be posting them on my website irregularly…

I will be traveling to Greece for the next 2 weeks or so. We will be doing some Greek islands “hopping”: Mykonos, Paros, Naxos, Santorini and some small islands in between. I don’t think I will have access to Internet there. I promise to answer your emails and get to your print orders as soon as I get back home.

Photography to me is not only a field, or a subject; it’s integral with my life. I’ll explain with a little analogy. I was interested in an interview on PBS with a famous violinist who described his life like this: “I get up in the morning and I’m thinking about music. I go for a little walk and I’m thinking of compositions. I come back and write about music. In the afternoon I go practice for a performance, and then, there is an evening performance. After the performance, friends and I got together and we play music.” The interviewer implied, “God, what a narrow, boring life.” The violinist said, “Yes, initially that was true. I was so focused and committed to my music but an interesting thing happened. I went through the little hole in the hourglass and I came out the other side, and now everything that I do in music connects to every other aspect of the human condition.” To myself I said, “God, I don’t know anything about music, but photography is just like that with me.”

Bill Jay
An Interview with Bill Jay by Darwin Marble
LensWork No. 16

When I was very young and began to work and had some money to buy a very poor camera, I began to take photos in a very systematic way, trying to perfect my technique. Later, my second camera was a little better. With it I took good pictures. I don’t know how to explain to you the reason for that interest. Down deep I think it was a literary one. Photography is sort of a literature of objects. When you take a photo, you make a decision. You frame some things and eliminate others. A good photographer is one who knows how to frame things better. And besides he knows how to choose by chance and there’s where surrealism comes into play. It has always seemed marvelous to me that someone can photograph two or three incongruous elements, for example, the standing figure of a man who, by some effect of light and shade projected onto the ground, appears to be a great black cat. On a profound level, I am producing literature, I am photographing a metaphor: a man whose shadow is a cat. I think I came to photography by way of literature.

Interview with Julio Cortazar
By Evelyn Picon Garfield

I must say that I love LensWork magazine. Despite its small size it truly stands out among other photography magazines. Because LensWork is not about technical aspects of photography which are not significant in my view, it is about Photography and the Creative Process. Every time I read LensWork I find quotes about what I think is truly important for me in photography. I have a collection of these quotes now. I decided to put them on my website and wrote this email to Brooks Jensen, LensWork Editor:

Dear Brooks,

I’m a great fan of your magazine. I think LensWork is the only genuine photography magazine on the market right now. I read it from cover to cover. I have been your fateful subscriber for many years (including your new Extended Edition). I have all your books (in both editions) and I think I bought every single item from your online store. My wish for you: just keep going. You are setting higher standards for the rest of us.

The reason I’m bothering you is not just worship, glorification and adoration to you and your magazine. I have a favor to ask. I’m redesigning my website and I want to use some quotes from LensWork publications and interviews. I guess there is a copyright issue. I officially ask your permission to use these quotes on my website. I will always have a reference to the author, article title and LensWork issue number. It will look something like that:

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“Photographers often pretend that they work in a media that is purely visual and independent of the influence of text and words, but in fact, it is a great delusion.”

Brooks Jensen
Image and Text
LensWork, Number 15

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I will gratefully appreciate your positive response to my request. In exchange I will promote LensWork from my website as best as I can. I will do that anyway regardless of your decision.

Sincerely,
Igor Menaker
www.menaker.com

Well, a few days later I’ve got email from Brooks:

Igor,
Thanks for all your interest in LensWork!

Feel free to use quotes as you need to with the attribution per your example. If you have room and it doesn’t mess up your layout, a link back to www.lenswork.com would be appreciated.

Thanks!
Brooks Jensen
Editor, LensWork Publishing

Written Thursday June 01, 2006 at 1:25PM

After a couple years of stagnation with my old website I finally decided to redesign it. Well, I kept the actual design pretty much the same, I think it is good. All I changed is the idea of the website. Before the idea was “extended business card” and now the idea is “visual diary”. I do not advertise my website and hence there are not so many visitors. According to the website logs the only loyal visitor is… me. I am the one browsing all these images. And looking at some of the old photos I discovered that I started to forget how and why I made them. And I decided to write a little story for each photo. One by one they will form a visual diary. There will be something to remember later on…