#C21st

"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

“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

“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

“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

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

 

~ Cig Harvey

“I travelled to Laos at the behest of the photographer Kenro Izu to make photographs which could be used and auctioned to raise funds for his Children’s Hospital there. Over the space of ten days, I photographed Buddhist Temples, the Mekong River and various mountains, trees, and landscapes of this delightfully hospitable country.
Whilst I stayed in Luang Prabang, I would walk from my hotel into town each evening to find something to eat for dinner. One night, on my way home I came across a pond with lotus flowers, closed and asleep for the night. The next morning I was there early to photograph these gorgeous white flowers as they lay open, floating on the water’s surface. This lotus flower was particularly appealing and starkly beautiful: hence I referenced my wife Mamta in the title. A year or so later, somebody kindly pointed out to me that the flower was not a lotus but a water lily!

Apparently, lotus flowers hover six inches above the water, water lilies float. Fortunately, I have an understanding wife and we decided together that it was too late to change the title to Mamta’s Water Lily. What’s in a name anyway!”

 

~ Michael Kenna

“In my personal quest for my family history, my aim is to make photographs that are not bound by time. Using the atmosphere of the past, I want to make history tangible and recognizable in the present”

 

~ Ilona Langbroek

“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

“If we feel more, I feel we will have more compassion. I use all of the formal devices that I have as an artist to ask, ‘How can I get you to look? How can I get you to live more?” 

 

~ Cig Harvey

“A great picture, no matter the medium used, has that wonderful power to draw you back, time and again, to pause and look upon it. There must be something chemical going on in the brain when you gaze upon a great work of art. It feels good and its addicting”

 

~ Laszlo Layton

“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

“I can do things here artistically that I couldn't do anywhere else."

~ Gregori Maiofis

“I tried to get under their skin. What if I were one of their colleagues? Working with the same equipment, and with my interest in zoology, what would I have come up with? My thinking was, what if one of those photographers were interested in wildlife?”

 

~ Laszlo Layton

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

~ Sebastião Salgado

“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

‘’Fashion designers offer one of the last refuges of the marvelous.They are in a way, the masters of dreams”

~ Christian Dior

“For me photography is pure fiction, even if it comes from life”

~ Sarah Moon

“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

“Said to be the most beautiful temple in South Korea, the Beopjusa Monastery, tucked in among the lush green hills of Songnisan National Park, was founded in AD 553. The name means ‘temple in which resides the teaching of the Buddha’, and the monastery is dedicated to the worship of Maitreya, the Future Buddha. As this image reveals, it is a place of peace and deep contemplation. ”

~ Steve McCurry

“I always had a strange feeling about how we order time into the past, present and future, as I never really felt that way. Sometimes, for example, one week can seem shorter than five minutes. When I started to photograph, when I was 19 years old, I felt then that I was playing with time. I was not sure what to do with this idea until much later in life, when I read the science-fiction novel, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.”

~ Miho Kajioka

“I want my photographs to be sensory, like edible flowers, a visual taste. Color and flowers act as symbol and metaphor to access our senses,”

~ Cig Harvey

“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

"If there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went."

 

~ Will Rogers

Photo Basel Switzerland’s first and only international art fair dedicated to photography based art, now in its 8th edition, is open!

The fair takes place during Art Basel week from June 12^th – 18^th  at Volkshaus Basel, just a short walk from Art Basel at the convention centre.

"What I try to achieve is to set up concepts using the human body as a base, while not making it the main focus of the picture. The result is a still image that is built around a person, but all parts of the whole are of equal importance. I reduce my pictures to content, composition, and form because this minimalist approach allows me to put equal emphasis on the idea behind the artwork and the entirety of the image. Portraying a sense of calmness with images that are built up based on geometric shapes is a recurring theme of my work."

~ Noell Oszvald

JEFFREY CONLEY

"AN ODE TO NATURE"

Musée de la Photographie Charles Nègre

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

"Photography always just gives, it never takes away"

~ Cig Harvey

"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

"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

"It’s difficult to get there, but once you manage to find your own voice it gets somewhat easier, because you know what you want to see in your images."

 

~ Noell Oszvald

“I am possessed by Photography”

~ Bernard Plossu

“You don’t take a photo, the photo gives itself to you”

 

~ Pentti Sammallahti

“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.”

"When you're observant, inspiration can show up in the most unusual places, triggering a new idea to appear.”

~ Noell Oszvald

"Everything I know, see or hear, every part of my life is transformed into dresses."

~ Christian Dior

"Real elegance is everywhere, especially in things that don't show it"

~ Christian Dior

“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

“There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless.”

~ Simone de Beauvoir

How to Force Blossoms

1. Acknowledge out loud your desperation for spring.

2. Find branches with plenty of buds on them.

3. Cut the stems at an angle.

4. Arrange in warm water.

5. Change the water daily.

6. Place in indirect sunlight all over the house.

7. Wait.

Warning — Forcing forsythia may cause a temporary aversion to violet, its opposite on the color spectrum.

~Cig Harvey

“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 always had a strange feeling about how we order time into the past, present and future, as I never really felt that way."

 

~ Miho Kajioka

“For as long as I can remember I have felt most at peace outdoors. Nature has always been my refuge and sanctuary. I find the natural world to be endlessly wondrous in it’s range of character and texture, from moments of delicate intimacy and subtlety to the massively expansive and powerful”

 

~Jeffrey Conley

"I see my pictures like pages of a coloring book in which content is stripped to the bare essence."

~ Noell Oszvald

“The world has been always made of many different layers – even before the disaster. And there have been always problems, and beautiful things have always remained beautiful…”

~ Miho Kajioka

“I remember how I loved to walk through the fair as a little kid and look at all these rare birds that I knew I would never see alive. Years and years had passed since I thought about those birds, and I really wanted to photograph them.”

~ Laszlo Layton

"Everyone is free to figure out what the picture says to them. It’s very interesting to read so many different thoughts about the same piece of work.”

 

- Noell Osvald