Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: Schewe on March 27, 2017, 03:07:25 am
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Saw this on Facebook...
(https://static01.nyt.com/images/2009/05/31/arts/31fink_600.jpg)
Credit Kevin Scanlon for The New York Times
Sebastião Salgado’s Advice For Young Photographers Today (https://medium.com/morning-light/sebastião-salgado-s-advice-for-young-photographers-today-94d21cb3086f#.mpn6reojn)
BTW, you might want to bookmark medium.com (https://medium.com). Started by one of the guys who launched Twitter, it's a long-form of discourse.
I tend to go to the certain tags: photography (https://medium.com/tag/photography), creativity (https://medium.com/tag/creativity), and technology (https://medium.com/tag/technology).
I've not written anything yet but I'm thinking of it...
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I had the very great privilege of meeting Sr. Salgado in conjunction with his exhibition of "Workers" in Prague, in the early 2000s, in the most unique of galleries: a series of railroad cars, parked (docked?) at the main rail station (Hlavni Nadrazi) in Prague. After a week or so in Prague, a locomotive hooked up to the cars and took them to the next place of exhibit, which was, I believe, Bratislava, Slovakia. In this way, the exhibit was able to wend its way throughout Eastern Europe, exhibiting wherever there was a rail siding available, without the need for dismounting, packing, shipping, unpacking, remounting, etc. Brilliant!
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Maybe we need the actual quote from Sebastião Salgado here:
“If you’re young and have the time, go and study. Study anthropology, sociology, economy, geopolitics. Study so that you’re actually able to understand what you’re photographing. What you can photograph and what you should photograph.”
He is right, of course.
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Sebastião is a very wise man. You can't "just get out there and shoot" and expect to end up with stuff that makes sense. You can see tons of this kind of crap on the web, and in many recent books on photography. You have to learn something first -- especially about life. Educational experiences are essential but life experiences are equally important.
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This is so true. Years ago, the wine industry took off in our community. One winery survived for over 100 years was the only game in town suddenly became twenty and has tripled since. To properly photograph, I picked grapes, made barrels, drove tractor, made wine, drank it then I could photograph. When I transitioned to work with wild land fire, I did the same, trained with the firefighters, worked the tools and equipment, then photographed and illustrated.
Same for my landscape work, I studied the geology, the flora and the fauna; lived in the desert.
Today, it's the same with my work with iconography, ancient orthodox churches, the ethnic community that I document. It started with curiosity, then learning the history, theology, prayer and worship and digging deeply, to live within, passion.
To simply photograph randomly, from outside and without knowledge and with little passion, one misses the very essence of the images and loses the deep connection and only portrays the superficial.
Look at the work of Sebastian, Henri, Ansel, Edward. Not only each crafted their vision but they succeed since they had a passion and a knowledge of the subjects they each photographed. Without that passion and knowledge, they simply take pictures and not create photographs.