#Landscape

“At the moment of shooting (composition) can stem only from our intuition, for we are out to capture the fugitive moment, and all the interrelationships involved are on the move……. It very rarely happens that a photograph which was feebly composed can be saved by reconstruction of its composition under the darkroom’s enlarger. The integrity of the vision is no longer there”

 

~ Henri Cartier-Bresson
(1908 - 2004)

“I feel that being a photographer is simply the logical endpoint for being someone who has a certain type of ability to observe. As a child, I noticed all sorts of things - some might say I was easily distracted, but really it was my early and formative time of refining my vision. I can’t stress enough how important observation is as the foundational component of being a photographer. It is all about noticing things; light, texture, form, the confluence of these elements within infinite combinations.”

 

~ Jeffrey Conley

“The great French photographer, Eugene Atget, spent many years photographing the gardens in and around Paris designed by the landscape architect André Le Nôtre in the 17th century. Early in my career, I followed in the footsteps of Atget to see where and how he photographed. I explored the formal estates of Versailles, Saint Cloud, Sceaux, Vaux-le-Vicomte and the Tuileries, amongst others, before finding Marly-le-Roi. Pools of water, fountains, rows of topiaried hedges and perspective illusions were the hallmark of Le Nôtre. This photograph, albeit maybe designed long after Le Nôtre, typifies an aspect of his landscapes - the unexpected. Through a forest of trees a circle appears, for no apparent reason. I’ve long felt that questions were far more interesting than answers. and this circle continues to intrigue me. Someday, I may find out what it is or what it is used for. Or maybe I won’t.”

 

~ Michael Kenna

“In my many years of photographing the landscape and prehistoric stones of Ireland, I had come to realize that the life of the place generated a quiet magic. During my photography, there was usually a herd of white deer. They were randomly roving on the grounds on an estate and so I asked permission of the owner and set myself to the task of how to photograph them. Catching them in small groups was unsatisfying but I remembered the talent of the Irish sheepdog and enlisted the help of the owner and his dog to corral a substantial number of these white beasts. I visualized the deer as being spread out before the trees of the estate and set about the choreography of the event. Some 25 or so of these deer were collected at one end of a long field and at my signal the dog was to chase them in my direction. My camera was set up so as to include on my ground glass the grass field as foreground and the trees and background with myself hidden in the tress so as not to be seen.Not knowing what to expect I signaled and to my delight and surprise one of the deer took the lead and the others followed one behind the other. In the subdued light of the day my calculated exposure required the widest lens, aperture and a slow shutter speed of I second. I did not know and could not know what impression would appear on my film but to my delight on processing the film I found a beautifully impressionist feel made by the running white deer. As to capturing something magical, I knew that to be the case when two white swans flew directly over my head and camera moments after releasing the shutter of the lens.”

 

~ Paul Caponigro

“Japan has a long and rich tradition of reciprocal gift giving. I have been the grateful recipient of so much over so many years in Japan, and I know that I will never be able to give back in equal measure. I hope this work can be seen as a small token of my desire to do so. I also hope this work can be viewed as a homage to Japan and that it will serve to symbolize my immense ongoing appreciation and deep gratitude for this beautiful and mysterious country”

~ Michael Kenna

“Photography is a medium, a language, through which I might come to experience directly, live more closely with, the interaction between myself and nature.”

 

– Paul Caponigro

"Why must art be static? You look at an abstraction, sculptured or painted, an entirely exciting arrangement of planes, spheres, nuclei, entirely without meaning. It would be perfect, but it is always still. The next step in sculpture is motion."

 

~ Alexander Calder

“I feel that being a photographer is simply the logical endpoint for being someone who has a certain type of ability to observe. As a child, I noticed all sorts of things - some might say I was easily distracted, but really it was my early and formative time of refining my vision. I can’t stress enough how important observation is as the foundational component of being a photographer. It is all about noticing things; light, texture, form, the confluence of these elements within infinite combinations.”

 

~ Jeffrey Conley

“Photography is for me a kind of meditation which widens my perception of the existing and evolving world around us. I seek refuge and simplicity in my photographs; and I find in it a personal accomplishment that I sincerely hope others too can feel.”

 

~ Jeffrey Conley

“I wait for photographs like a pointer dog. It is a question of luck and circumstance. I prefer winter, the worse the weather, the better the photograph will be."

 

~ Pentti Sammallahti

'In viewing the images in Devotion and at Peter Fetterman Gallery, I can only conclude that if, as the saying goes, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.,” then I’d revise that to say “Beauty is in the eye of Steve McCurry.'

 

~ Tom Teicholz

"Known as the land of fire and ice, Iceland is a place of contrasts. The landscape often feels simultaneously vast, intimate, stark, and delicate. There is something in the distinctive wide-open spaces, combined with ever-changing light and weather conditions, that reveals the implicit grace of the austere topography. It is a special place to witness. In this photograph, land, sky, and water are delineated elements that coalesce in a way that’s unique to the region. It represents a calming experience and memory and I very much look forward to returning."

 

~ Jeffrey Conley

"Don Hong-Oai's photographs portray a deep inner world where imagination thrives and dreams are created. His masterful craftsmanship creates a reality where anything is possible."

 

~ Michael Kenna

"This delicate tree, sitting quietly and improbably in the cold waters of Wanaka Lake, is possibly one of the most photographed trees in New Zealand. I have had the great pleasure to visit it several times, and have usually waited in line behind bus loads of visiting tourists before being able to say hello. On this early pre-dawn morning, however, I was delighted to find myself alone, until I discovered some unexpected company in the form of birds, contentedly sleeping on the tree’s branches. My usual M.O. is to make long time exposures so that clouds and water transform into timeless and enigmatic mists. As the emerging light slowly began to appear, I made several such exposures, aware that both the branches and birds were moving. I was waiting for the birds to leave, before I could make what I considered to be a classical Kenna image, which I later printed and titled 'Wanaka Lake Tree, Study 1'.

Several years passed and I was asked by the publisher Atelier Xavier Barral to participate in a series of books they were publishing on birds, 'Les Oiseaux'. I went through my negative files and discovered many unprinted negatives in which birds were depicted, including this image which I subsequently titled 'Wanaka Lake Tree, Study 2’.

I have long felt that aesthetic decisions should never be dogmatic, and should always be challenged and doubted. At the time I made the photographs, I was convinced that the tree 'sans oiseaux" was the stronger image. Now I am less sure. Time has a way of playing with one’s emotions and sensibilities.
Our views sometimes change, precisely because we are alive and changeable, which I find immensely reassuring!"

 

~ Michael Kenna

“Nothing is ever the same twice because everything is always gone forever, and yet each moment has infinite photographic possibilities.”

~ Michael Kenna

"I traveled the world, when it was a different time. I have been from A to Z, from Alaska to Zanzibar, Mongolia, you name it. It’s outstanding to think how much the world has changed in my lifetime, isn’t it?"

~ Sheila Metzner

“Driving alone in Hokkaido in 2002, I was startled to see this attractive fence, climbing a snow-covered hillside. I stopped the car by the side of the road and made photographs of the fence and hillside. Later I would need a truck driver to tow me out of the field of snow where I had inadvertently parked, but that’s another story. Almost every year I have returned to Hokkaido and have photographed this same fence and hillside. I was there just a few months ago in February of this year 2023. One might think that little would change in such a scene - it is just a fence and a hill after all. Yet, each time I revisit, I find that something is different - a new pattern and configuration might appear, an arrangement of forms could change, distant contacts or lengthens to become ambiguous, perspectives alter, snow levels vary, and the light is never the same. The minimalism and sheer simplicity transform three dimensions into two, and the space elements involved seem to make the print more like a Sumi-e ink painting than a photograph. So far, I have made and printed eight studies of this fence, and I fully anticipate a new study form this years’s visit. This location is a gift which keeps giving.”

~ Michael Kenna

"The camera for an artist is just another tool. It is no more mechanical than a violin if you analyze it. Beyond the rudiments, it is up to the artist to create art, not the camera.”

 

~ Brett Weston

"I have entered into an unspoken, unwritten and generally inscrutable pact with the people I have photographed and lived among: if I promise not to tell all I know about them, they will do the same for me."

~ Kurt Markus
(1947-2022)

“What I want is to suggest rather than really show, I like my images to be little seeds sown in people's heads and for them to blossom in everyone's head.”

 

~ Patrick Taberna

“Photography teaches us to see, and we can see whatever we wish. When I take a photograph, I make a wish. I was always looking for beauty.”

 

~ George Tice

“I believe only in the rectangle. Filling that rectangle with a photograph remains the most challenging thing you can do. If you have to go outside of it, bringing in other non-photographic things to put inside, you run the risk of gimmickry. For me, the most powerful expression is the simplest.”

~ Kurt Markus

“When our paths crossed I found the man who taught me happiness”

 

~ Robert Doisneau

“I seek refuge and simplicity in my photographs and find a personal resolution and fulfillment that I sincerely hope others experience as well.”

 

~ Jeffrey Conley

“From the city of Kyoto Japan, a tram may be taken to ascend the nearby mountain where temples, shrines and sand gardens nestle in among the shifting fog so prevalent at that altitude. With my camera, I moved as quietly as the fog itself and came upon a place where a temple structure and a large dark tree appeared as if bathing themselves in the mysterious mountain atmosphere. The quiet of the place and the dignity of the structures and tree created a sense of sanctity and inspired awe within this magical space. I believe that my photograph captured the beauty and peacefulness that was seldom encountered in the city’s bustle below.”

 

~ Paul Caponigro

"You never go out with your camera and come back saying I wish I hadn't done that"

 

~ Cig Harvey

“Everything inside the frame is equally important”

 

~ Pentti Sammallahti

“Humble's impres­sive output of colour photographs does for LA by day what Brassai did for Paris by night. Despite their geographic specificity, though, what makes Humble's pictures intriguing isn't the way they create a sense of place about the city, but how they capture its sense of dislocation. ”

 

~ Carmine Iannaccone

“It was along a Kentucky Highway that I was prompted to stop and consider making a photograph of a stand of trees gracing the hillside that more than intrigued me. An inner feeling like “deja vu” convinced me to stop along the road to ponder what was before me and might soon be focused on my camera’s ground glass.

Having one’s attention sharply taken by a simple scene can give a state of inner quiet that helps in understanding more deeply the nature of such an encounter. I had the realization that I had seen, in exact detail this very landscape in one of my dreams prior to physically arriving at this seemingly predetermined place. Time and space had been patiently awaiting my arrival to create a photograph of the world in between. A nebulous and elusive dream space had found it’s way into the solid light of day”

 

~ Paul Caponigro

“I believe that we all have the simple, (and sometimes incredibly complicated), responsibility to live to our highest potential. I bring this belief to my photography, (as well as everything else I do), and it has ensured that there is rarely a moment where I do not feel inspired and passionate.”

 

~ Michael Kenna

“When I go out to photograph, I am wandering with a purpose. I am particularly captivated to the quietness and quality of light in the very early morning hours. I can control where I am and when I’m there- beyond that I am perfectly comfortable, with senses responsive, letting events unfold on their own terms. ”

 

~ Jeffrey Conley

“The basis for my artistic work is concrete observation. I am interested in the photographs as a physical object and all the prints are made by myself."

~ Kristoffer Albrecht

“In GENESIS, my camera allowed nature to speak to me. And it was my privilege to listen.”

~ Sebastião Salgado

“The mountains are calling, and I must go.”

~ John Muir

"I was trying to give an honest picture of a city.
But San Francisco was so beautiful visually."

~ Max Yavno

"The key is to not let the camera, which depicts nature in so much detail, reveal just what the eye picks up, but what the heart picks up as well."

~ Paul Caponigro

“Lightning Strikes” was a combination of patience and luck. I had seen the shack and the bar sign and knew I wanted to return and find a photo. There were often lightning storms in late afternoon that summer and I frequently found myself at the location waiting for the lightning to no avail. One day, not only did I get the lightning, but it was pure luck that a single bolt appeared to be striking the bar”.

 

~ Roger Deakins

“Perfection - you are striving towards the perfect print. In the darkroom, you can almost hear the applause, the accolade of this perfect print. If I know that I’ll be printing the next day I go to bed at night worrying and sometimes I'll actually scan the negative in my imagination whilst I’m lying in bed”

~ Don McCullin

"I often think of my work as visual haiku. It is an attempt to evoke and suggest through as few elements as possible rather than to describe with tremendous detail."~ Michael Kenna

“Photography’s a case of keeping all the pores of the skin open as well as the eyes. A lot of photographers today think that by putting on the uniform, the fishing vest and all the Nikons that makes them a photographer. But it doesn’t. It’s not just seeing. It’s feeling”

 

~ Don McCullin

"I have always loved light... Its manifestations serve as symbols of the greatest secrets of the unknown. Creativity has enabled me to probe and reveal step by step the unknown. Even though I know I can only travel a short distance, every step in that direction is a transcendental experience."

 

~ Wynn Bullock

"I find the natural world to be endlessly wondrous in its range of character and texture, from moments of delicate intimacy and subtlety to the massively expansive and powerful."

~ Jeffrey Conley

“What I want is to suggest rather than really show; I like my images to be little seeds sown in people's heads and for them to blossom in everyone's head.”

~ Patrick Taberna

"Photography is never objective.”

 

~ Gianni Berengo Gardin

"I try not to make conscious decisions about what I am looking for. I don't make elaborate preparations before I go to a location. Essentially I walk, explore, discover and photograph."

~ Michael Kenna

" I feel like I received the photograph, I didn't take it. If you're in the right place at the right time, then all you have to do is push a button. Being a photographer doesn't come into it. Everything I've photographed exists regardless of me, my role is only to be receptive."

 

~ Pentti Sammallahti

“I knew my destiny when I first experienced Yosemite”

~ Ansel Adams
(1902-1984)

“I can still recall the excitement of seeing the visualization “come true” when I removed the plate from the fixing bath for examination. The desired values were all there in their beautiful negative interpretation. This was one of the most exciting moments of my photographic career.”

~ Ansel Adams
(1902-1984)

”As I continued to photograph I became quite joyous. I knew that I could express the things I wanted to say by giving them form through my eyes”

~ Inge Morath
(1923 - 2002)

“It is difficult to conceive of a substance more impressively brilliant than the spurting plumes of white waters in sunlight against a deep blue sky”

~ Ansel Adams
1902-1984

"Great images do not need a commentary or a context to elucidate them. As a matter of fact, it is the greatness of the images themselves that gives a meaning to the context."

~ Gianni Berengo Gardin

JEFFREY CONLEY

"AN ODE TO NATURE"

Musée de la Photographie Charles Nègre

Opening June 09, 2023
June 10, 2023 - September 24, 2023

“Someday you will know that a father is much happier in his children’s happiness than in his own. I cannot explain it to you: it is a feeling in your body that spreads gladness through you.”

~ Honore de Balzac
(Le Père Goriot, 1835)

“If you look the right way, you can see the whole world is a garden"

~ Frances Hodgson Burnett
(1849-1924)

"Nobody has ever accused me of being an intellectual. So perhaps the most significant asset I bring to my efforts is an innocent eye. Endless curiosity propels me. Then the discipline of years and respect for the affairs of craftsmanship allow the vision to develop mysteriously into a surprise. Gratitude for arduous, mundane, or occasionally painful experiences is rare, but the many types of photography in my background have allowed some visual synthesis to emerge from my monkey mind. Restless and impatient, with no time to dwell on such things, I lurch onward. No subject is sacred or safe from my attack. Beware. Being inherently nosy, I poke into every odd corner. Since photography is a process of discovery for me, I periodically produce an image that delights or amuses me. Then I'm anxious to see what it evokes in others."

 

~ Fred Lyon
(1924-2022)

"Manzanar, the site of one of the World War II relocation camps, is about fifteen miles north of Lone Pine. While I was photographing in and around the camp in 1943 and 1944 I made some of my best images. I knew the region well; it is roughly 150 miles from Yosemite over the Tioga Pass – or 400 road miles southward when the Tioga is closed by snow. While at Manzanar for a fortnight in the winter of 1944, Virginia and I arose very early in the mornings and drove to Lone Pine with hopes of a sunrise photograph of the Sierra. After four days of frustration when the mountains were blanketed with heavy cloud, I finally encountered a bright, glistening sunrise with light clouds streaming from the southeast and casting swift moving shadows on the meadow and the dark rolling hills. I set up my camera on my car platform at what I felt was the best location, overlooking a pasture. It was very cold – perhaps near zero – and I waited, shivering, for a shaft of sunlight to flow over the distant trees. A horse grazing in the frosty pasture stood facing away from me with exasperating, stolid persistence. I made several exposures of moments of light and shadow, but the horse was uncooperative, resembling a distant stump. I observed the final shaft of light approaching. At the last moment, the horse turned to show its profile, and I made the exposure. Within a minute the entire area was flooded with sunlight and the natural chiaroscuro was gone. The negative of Winter Sunrise is rather complex to print. It is a problem of agreeable balance between the brilliant snow on the peaks and the dark shadowed hills. I have often thought what a privilege it would be to live and work in this environment, perhaps best before the turn of the century when the efforts of man brought more beauty to the land than now, with our pavements, wires, contrails, and desolation. This photograph suggests a more agreeable past and may remind us that, with a revived dignity and reverence for the earth, more of the world might look like this again."

~ Ansel Adams

"In GENESIS, my camera allowed nature to speak to me. And it was my privilege to listen."

~ Sebastião Salgado

"I think of being out in the landscape as a time to harvest observations - then in the darkroom is the time where the observation finds its voice, its landing space in its physical manifestation as a platinum/ palladium print."

 

~ Jeffrey Conley

“A photograph is neither taken or seized by force. It offers itself up. It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos”

~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

"A picture can express a universal humanism, or simply reveal a delicate and poignant truth by exposing a slice of life that might otherwise pass unnoticed."

~ Steve McCurry

“My camera is like the arrow. Do I reach the target or does the target reach me or is it the same thing? It’s all very emotional.”

~ Bernard Plossu

"It's surely our responsibility to do everything within our power to create a planet that provides a home not just for us, but for all life on Earth."

~ Sir David Attenborough

"I can’t stress enough how important observation is as the foundational component of being a photographer. It is all about noticing things; light, texture, form, the confluence of these elements within infinite combinations. Essentially my passion for landscape photography came through being a person who is a certain type of observant as well as someone who has always felt at peace and tremendously as ease out in nature."

~ Jeffrey Conley

"Mother's love, that divine gift which comforts, purifies, and strengthens all who seek it."

~ Louisa May Alcott

"I see these hand treated palm sized prints as a continuation of not only that adoration, but as a collection of moments. Moments that one may overlook but I want to make them feel big and significant. And things, physical or otherwise, do not have to be vast or demonstrative to have great meaning and relevance."

 

-Ernesto Esquer

"I would strongly encourage anybody embarking in photography as a career to embrace and enjoy the whole process. Being a photographer can be a wonderful way to experience the world."

 

~ Michael Kenna

“The mark of a successful individual is one that has spent an entire day on the bank of a river without feeling guilty about it.”

 

~ Chinese Proverb

“It’s the subject matter that counts. I’m interested in revealing the subject in a new way to intensify it. A photo is able to capture a moment that people can’t always see”

 

~ Harry Callahan

“The Sonoran Desert bloom is a magical time for us in this area. Thanks to the winter rains, brown and arid is replaced with a magnificent array of colors, with flowers popping up seemingly overnight. Cactus flowers in particular are the greatest gift. After hibernating and saving up their energy during the cold months, the mother cactus plant releases a display of hues and tones that one would think come from another world. This hand colored print serves as tribute to all the colors of prickly pear cactus you see around the desert during this blooming period.”

“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.”

 

~ Susan Sontag

“There is something instinctive about the moment you choose to “take” a photograph. It’s not the result of thought or reflection.The strength of the composition is always born of the instinct of the decision. It reminds me of archery. There is the tension of the bow and the free flight of the arrow”

~ Edouard Boubat
(1923 - 1999)

“Give me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling”

~ Walt Whitman
(1819-1892)

"Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
As the images unwind, like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind!"

~ from 'The Windmills of your Mind' (1968)
First recorded by Noel Harrison
Lyrics written by Alan & Marilyn Bergman
with music composed by Michel Legrand

“I like to get to know trees intimately. I spend a lot of time walking around them trying to become acquainted with them. In fact, it’s as though I talk to them.”

 

~ Michael Kenna

"I believe that each of us has a unique structure of visual organization. I also believe that whatever structure we have is the result of the visual character of the place in which we spent our earliest years. Each of us sees with our own pattern, but artists and gardeners are the ones to find that pattern and build something that we can see around it."

 

~ Gregory Conniff

“Nature is in constant change and photography is particularly well suited to capture and amplify the swirling fluidity and the wonderfully serendipitous moments born of the ephemeral. Photographing nature is a very specific kind of exercise in mindfulness”

 

~ Jeffrey Conley

“Everything inside the frame is equally important”

~ Pentti Sammallahti

“I am a lucky man. I can do something with almost anything I see. Everything is still interesting to me"

~ André Kertész

“For all of us, the Earth sustains our existence. In an otherwise in hospitable known universe, our little blue planet provides us with absolutely everything. I’ve never understood why our societal and spiritual priorities as a species do not overwhelmingly demonstrate our gratitude by placing our planet at the pinnacle of the reverential order”

 

~ Jeffrey Conley