Ansel Adams – Empowering Others

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Ansel Adams impressed me as a boy. What impressed me was the total package: his images (He helped codify a movement and a genre.); his technical mastery (He refined and disseminated the zone system.); his educational efforts through books (They are still in print today.) and workshops (He set up his own program and invited others to teach with him.); his environmental advocacy both locally (It’s hard to think of Yosemite without thinking of Ansel Adams.) and nationally (He had a strong relationship with the Sierra Club and many other environmental organizations.); his strong networks of friends in wide-ranging fields (They included the painter Georgia O’Keefe and the activist David Brower.). What’s more, all of these elements worked in concert with one another creating a marvelous synergy where each enriched the other. At the end of his life, he wasn’t the wealthiest man alive, but he was rich beyond measure in so many other ways and he left us knowing he had made major contributions. Perhaps more than any other photographer he influenced both his medium and his culture and he did so by empowering others.

Ansel Adams life and work challenge me to think about how to make my own life’s work more impactful and far-reaching.

Find out more about my influences here.

Influences – Four Nudes

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Sometimes you find your own voice through observing your responses to other people’s work.

One of my visual journals is a collection of images that I appreciate. When you bring enough images together new patterns emerge. This was certainly the case for me when I sifted through my favorite photographs of nudes and found a thread that tied together works by Jerry Uelsmann, Emmet Gowin, Harry Callahan, and Ruth Bernhard. All four of the photographs I had selected used double exposure to merge the figure with the landscape. It wasn’t that these works were typical of each artist’s work; Jerry Uelsmann who would be best know for this kind of work offers many such images; Harry Callahan was highly experimental and offered only a handful of these kinds of treatments; Ruth Bernhard produced fewer; Emmet Gown only produced even fewer. What had been revealed through the process of creating this collection was my own interest in a specific kind of imagery and a particular theme.

Overtly stated in my own photographs of nudes in varying degrees of transparency, the theme of man and nature as one runs through all of my work. Whether subtly or dramatically, directly or indirectly, I’m interested in all types of imagery that challenge conventional notions of separateness and offer a vision of unity.

Read more about my influences here.

Matthais Grunewald – Acknowledging The Beatific & The Demonic

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Despite a challenging relationship with the church, I still find the content in the Bible and the good acts it inspires extremely inspiring. I had strong spiritual feelings as a very young child and they’re still with me today. Many works of art inspired me, none more than Matthais Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece. It’s a complex masterpiece. Two panels in particular mean a great deal to me. The Resurrection epitomizes the word beatific – transcendently wise, compassionate, and fulfilled. The Temptation of St Anthony is a riveting portrayal of a supreme test of that state and how it can survive and even be strengthened by confrontations with the darkest negativities.

I see images like Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece and I feel called to try and rise to some small measure of this greater state of being. Achieving this depth of perspective and strength of expression is a primary goal of my life/art. For me, making art is a call to learn and put that learning into practice.

Read more about my influences here.

Experiment – Animals

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During my recent South Africa Photo Safari (sponsored by NIK) in Mala Mala, South Africa, I spent several days photographing African wildlife. We saw all of the big five (lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, cape buffalo) and many other animals. It was the first time I made a concerted effort to make finished wildlife photographs. I gained an increased appreciation for how moments of peak action (or lack thereof) can make or break some photographs. I made many competent photographs, but only one that I felt began to have an inspired quality. I suspected I would have no intention of using these kinds of images professionally – and confirmed this. But, these images rekindled an old flame.
Making these images reminded me of the many hours I spent drawing animals. I quickly discovered that for what I wanted to depict, portraits weren’t enough, interaction and context were necessary. I was interested in how people, of many eras and cultures, react psychologically to animals and to the archetypal ideas of animals we share. One of my favorite essays is about an animal – the snake. Psychologist James Hillman’s A Snake Is Not A Symbol (from the book Dream Animals.) has an enormous amount to offer about how we respond to images of animals. He suggests we reanimate images, especially those we encounter in dreams, through an extended inner dialog with them.
Days later, after making these images, during which my guide repeatedly warned me about the potential for finding hidden snakes, I had a dream about a snake, which was very important to me personally. For me, it was one more in a long line of dreams about snakes. It’s fascinating to see how inner material resurfaces during the creative process and what we can do to stimulate and work with this process.
What images could you make to help you reconnect with and develop important material in your inner life?
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Track Your Influences

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Frequently, old ideas and feelings surface in the midst of our creative process. Tracking our own fixations and chains of association can be both revealing and rewarding.
The paintings of Morris Graves made a big impression on me at an early age. Ever since, I been interested in photographs of dead animals, particularly birds. I even made some of my own.
I stumbled into this territory, once again, by chance, while photographing on the side of the road in Iceland. I quickly made this sketch with my iPhone. I knew what was happening while I was doing it, because I’d already done a lot of observation of my creative process and soul searching. I recommend you do the same for yourself. You’ll be richly rewarded with highly personal insights.
Find out about my 2012 Iceland digital photography workshop here.
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Influences – Sculpture

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Is there a pattern to the artists above? Yes. They’re all influential to me.

Who are your influences? If you’re an artist you hear this question all the time. Many of us resist the temptation to answer as our answers may lead others to a poor choice of words – derivative. The reality is we’re all being influenced all of the time. It’s interesting to separate your enduring influences (the ones that stand the test of time) and your current influences (the most recent). For instance, I just saw the Louise Bourgeois exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC. It’s influencing me. Will I do something with that influence immediately? Will that influence stay with me long enough to become significant? Time will tell. I also visited my favorite gallery in the Metropolitan Museum in NYC – the Rockefeller wing containing artifacts from primal cultures typically used for sacred or ceremonial functions. I go there every time I visit the museum. Every time I’m thrilled. The influence of this kind of art has been and will be with me my whole life.

Read more about my influences here.