When I am making photographs, I am often guided by my own thinking about and what various people have
written about the aims of creative work. The selections below are representative of the ideas I have found helpful
in the process of writing with light.
What I try to evoke in my photographs is the dynamic of the landscape, its spiritual and physical energy, its livingness,
its essential mystery. Joseph Blakemore
Art is not what you see, but what you make others see. Edgar Degas
Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing. Camille Pissarro
The artist perceives the material of the world--visible things, patterns of sound, texture--as offering more than can
appear in one moment of encounter and so begins to produce a further thing in the world that will allow that unseen or unheard
life to continue itself in another mode . . . awareness of a depth in the observable world beyond what is at any moment observable
is close to what seems to be meant by 'the sacred'. Rowan Williams
As to Chinese hsing ssu . . . it is not outward appearances (hsing) which is to be exhibited as such, but
rather . . . the immanent spirit (shen), or breath of life (ch'i), that is to be revealed by a use of natural form to this
end . . . the work of art must reveal "the operation of the spirit (ch'i) in life movement," . . . (or) "by means of
natural shape (hsing), represent divine spirit (shen)," . . . Coomaraswamy
The splendour of the simple. Martin Heidegger
The thing itself, a thing all but beyond the range of logical proof of Kant, just might lie within
the focus of a lens made by Goerz or Zeiss, in the hands (and for the eye) of a thoughtful practitioner who
values seeing. (Boldface added) Jerry Thompson (Translation: thinking plus looking
equals seeing)
what counts most in human life is pure, astonished amazement at the fact that anything at all should exist and, greater
still, that anything and everything should display such beauty. Roy Anker
An artist is conscious of something besides the mere physical, in every object in nature. He feels its expression,
he sympathizes with its character, he is impressed with its language; his heart, mind, and soul are stirred in its contemplation.
It is the life, the feeling, the mind, the soul of the subject itself. Albert Sands Southworth
Based on reflections like these, the photographs I seek to create a) allow what is to show
itself unemcumbered by ideas, expectations or judgments; and b) reveal the "something more" which lies behind or under or
within the what is.
