G. Steve Journal

Passionate Suspicion

This sentiment, this magnetic pull towards discovery, is true of any creative endeavor:

Nothing whets the intelligence more than a passionate suspicion, nothing develops all the faculties of an immature mind more than a trail running away into the dark.

                                                                                                                           –– Stefan Zweig

[thanks, Goodreads]

The Way You See...

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”

                                                                                                                        –– Elliott Erwitt

[thanks, Frank Beacham]

 

Feelings

Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.
                                                                                                                            –– Walker Evans

 

What Is Beautiful

An excerpt from a Bill Moyers interview some time ago with author Barry Lopez:

...there are certain things that people say you shouldn't talk about, because it makes people nervous.

The things that make us uncomfortable in public are a person who wishes to speak of what is beautiful. That makes everybody a little bit nervous, because many of us keep this jaded, cynical separateness with the world, because we're cautious. We're cautious. How many people do you know whose crying out is for intimacy? They want to be known. They want to be touched. But they can't make that intimate connection without being vulnerable. You have to be vulnerable in order to achieve this exchange of intimacy. And you can't be vulnerable unless you can trust the situation. And what we're learning, many of us, is the world is not trustworthy enough for you to be vulnerable to it and gain that intimacy.

It Is Peace

In the introduction to "William Eggleston's Guide," John Szarkowski, Director of Photography at MOMA at the time, brilliantly describes what photographers are attempting when searching for and composing an image:

...a photographer wants form, an unarguably right relationship of shapes, a visual stability in which all components are equally important. The photographer hopes, in brief, to discover a tension so exact that it is peace.