#Trees

“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

“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

“There is an orchestra outside my window”

 

~ Cig Harvey

“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

"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

"There had been a raging blizzard during the night. When I awakened in my bed, I looked toward the window to see a magnificent display of frost. Nature’s storm had playfully arranged what seemed to be stationary snowflakes on the pane of glass. Looking through the window and its decoration of frosted crystals. I saw a tree trunk with its branches rhythmically and joyfully dancing as if in celebration of the visual magic that was before my eyes. It was now up to me to quickly arise and to gather my equipment and film to etch all this beauty and magic onto film and silver paper”

 

~Paul Caponigro

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

~ Michael Kenna

“In time I came to realize that good photography was not the result of good technique alone. The expressive print requires emotional depth and not merely dazzle, and can only be artistically effective if the soft-edged realm of emotion is united with hard-edged technical concerns. Much like the ugly duckling’s story, one need await beauty through maturity, and this transition takes photography from a medium of recording to one of transforming. I saw that light, chemistry, film and coated papers were all endowed with the power to release the feeling of magic within the silver print. While working in the field or in my darkroom, I often felt that a complete openness to my subjects and materials brought about the notion that I alone was not making choices, but that the subjects and materials were at times choosing me. The picture making realm has a voice of its own and my primary tool working therein would be the ability to listen to a very pregnant silence”

 

~ Paul Caponigro

“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

“Everything inside the frame is equally important”

 

~ Pentti Sammallahti

"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

“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 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
(1911-1993)

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

~ Walt Whitman
(1819-1892)

“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 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

“A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense and is thereby a true expression of what one feels about life in it’s entirety. And the expression of what one feels should be set forth in terms of simple devotion to the medium - a statement of the utmost clarity and perfection possible under the conditions of creation and production”

~Ansel Adams
(1902-1984)

 

“Ansel Adams was one of the great photographers of this century. He was also one of the best loved spokespersons for the obligations we owe to the natural world. It has been easy to confuse the related but distinct achievements that earned him these twin honors. Although he devoted a lifetime to the cause of wilderness preservation, Adams did not photograph the landscape as a matter of social service but as a form of private worship. It was his own soul that he was trying to save. His great work was done under the stimulus of a profound and mystical experience of the natural world”

John Szarkowski
(1925 - 2007)

Wynn Bullock, to my mind, is one the greatest 20th Century photographers. Often eclipsed by his more well known contemporaries, Edward Weston and Ansel Adams.  This is a haunting portrait of his mother’s hands taken in his modest house in Carmel in 1956. The beauty of the print just knocks me out and is the definition of the word “primal”.