I think Art should touch. I think that it should move on to greater consciousness of what one’s life is all about.

In our culture, there’s no place for a whisper to be heard.

I use Nikons. I’m not an equipment nut. I think that you should know your equipment and forget about it. Can you see Joyce and Steinbeck and Hemingway all sitting around comparing typewriters?

What people tend to photograph is what they have been taught to see.

Everybody has fixed ideas in their minds. We’re not open and this is the problem.

The photograph by itself is one experience, but the photograph with the text is quite another experience.

Duane Michals
The Mind of Duane Michals
LensWork No. 9

Today I posted a few photographs I brought back from my recent trip to Greece. Most of them are photographs of stairs from Santorini. It became a surprise even for me when later I looked at the collection: I’m not sure where the theme of stairs came from. I guess it is the way these little villages in Santorini are built: perched on the high cliff above the sea, paths and stairs, dome shaped structures growing on each other. It feels natural as natural world: Santorini is one few places where you feel not aliened by perfect straight lines and forms of modern architecture.

I immediately turned to my bookshelf and found book of legendary Christopher Alexander “The Luminous Ground: The Nature of Order” and turned to the page which offered me an explanation:

Human beings have, in the past, recognized such places as numinous. They are places which carry the spirit. They are places which carry the soul. This language may or may not useful. But what I want to insist on, is only the one thing: some places, some things, are of such a nature that we feel more intensely related to them, we feel a relationship with them, a direct relationship between our self and that thing, that place. We feel it most strongly, and when we feel it we feel that we are connected with all things, with the universe.

Photography is unlike any other contemporary art form. Everyone in the 21st century, at least in the Western world, has experience of having looked at millions of photographs. We see them all the time, and we know what a good photograph is. We are all experts.

The way to collect is to buy a photograph and take it home. Look, react, and commit.

If you’re burdened with worries about photograph’s provenance, the photograph’s “greatness”, the photograph’s price, etc., you may be missing the point. Pursue the experience that’s pleasurable. When you see an image that thrills you, you must have that piece in your life. Buy it, take it home, hang it on the wall, and live with it.

I’ve come to understand my collection as a manifestation of my unconscious. Buying photographs has led me to on an amazingly personal journey and, curiously enough, it has been a tool for gaining an even stronger sense of myself. It is a completely symbiotic relationship: as I have grown, so has the collection, and vice versa.

W.M. Hunt
Collector and Gallerist
Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York

Creativity is simply thinking more clearly and communicating more effectively than has been done previously. CREATE from the Latin create, “to bring into existence.” The “bringing into existence” I speak of here is shared vision, understating, or experience between the artist and the audience through the medium of the “art-ifact”.

Brooks Jensen
Image and Text
LensWork, No. 15

The Chinese character for love - decoding character from top to bottom: That which gives breath (”spirit”) to the heart, with a graceful motion Rose Quong Chinese Characters: Their Wit and Wisdom

One day several years ago sitting a car at the red light I had a revelation. It was about love. I was given a mission in life: to bring more love to this world with my photography. It is not love between man and woman, it is not a relationship love, no. It is more like love from heaven: bliss-like state, Zen. We all live our busy lives, overwhelmed with our daily problems, job, family. We think that it is all important. And it is. But deep inside we know there is something even more important. It is simple, yet very powerful. And it is so silly that we tend to ignore it. It is love. John Lennon was right: “All you need is love…”

Anyway, that is my purpose: make photographs that bring love. I am not the only one. There is an army of artists that constantly replenish a reservoir of positive energy in this world. And I don’t believe that there is another army pumping reservoir of negative energy. No. There is just a drain hole of ignorance…

I think about art and photography all the time. I wake up in the morning with ideas in my head I went to sleep with. I perfect the craft of photography every day. I travel to remote places where air is pure and sweet to feed from the primordial spring of unspoiled landscape. And even though most of my work is landscape photography it is not all about nature and landscape. I don’t mean to offer dream escape for city dwellers (and I’m one of them). I don’t mean to mimic other landscape photographers whom a plenty. I offer not landscape, nor nature, but my interpretation of it, my conscience, my view. There is a saying that viewfinder of the camera is pointed not outside, but inside. My view is limited but it is unique and that is the gift I was given, that is what I have.

I need your help. Make it happen. I can do only half of my job, my mission: make photographs. Your choice is to do another half: look at them. That’s where the mystery happens and message of love is been sent and received. I just cannot do it alone…

I think when you are making photographs, you work on an intuitive level that is different than your normal level. You reach beyond your intellectual capacity and are in another world, basically. That’s why artists do what they do. It frees them and lets them be something else. As a photographer, you go past yourself and are receptive to that layering, knowing that it might take time.

Jack Stuler
An interview of Jack Stuler by Marilyn Hayers
LensWork No. 19

I am fascinated with apes. They are like we are - humans and the same time they are not. Looking at them I always think what they think looking at me. That is thought to think about while picking from the nose…

Factory Butte just west of Hanksville along Hwy 24 is one of my favorite places in Southern Utah. I love this place to the point of obsession. There is something magical about it, at least for me. To other people it may mean nothing and they breeze through the desert at 65 mph without even giving a glance at Factory Butte rising in a distance.

That spring in 2003 was different than others I have been in Southern Utah. The wind was strong, mix of thunderclouds and blue sky was spectacular. The clouds were moving very fast with rain streaming from them and as quite often in desert it dried out before even reaching the ground. Ancient Indians called these clouds “rain god” and there are numerous rock art panels in Utah with this image.

It was late afternoon and I was trying to find a way so I could make an image of Factory Butte from behind. The picture I had in my mind is the butte glowing in a warm sunset light. I followed a trail which went north and then east of Factory Butte (I checked this trail again this spring in 2006 but unfortunately it was completely washed out by winter storms). Crossing a shallow stream a couple times the trail climbed uphill and abruptly ended at the abandoned well. I was east from the butte all right, but on the other side of the canyon and there was no way to get across. The wind gusts were rocking the car and setting up a tripod was out of the question.

Instead of sunset I found a picture far more exciting: thundercloud shadows and patches of light were quickly moving across the face of the butte. Being almost knocked over by the strong wind I made several compositions and finally made a series of handheld shots for multi-row panorama. And the light was gone.

Later at home I spent several days stitching together 10 frames which made this image. I still think it is far from perfection and I should redo it someday.

I feel reasonable sure, having been on several sides of photography for 55 years now, that any photograph that you make for somebody else may pay a substantial fee towards your survival. Anything you do for yourself nobody wants.

Todd Walker
LensWork No. 6