Art Comes Alive

I have a photograph hanging in the Art Comes Alive show at ADC Gallery in Cincinnati through July 24. The photos I submitted are online at the ACA website. "Uprooted " is the print in the show.

Photographic Quote of the Week: Robert Frank

Fourth of July--Jay, New York, Robert Frank, 1954

Something I really like is a big flag. Here, people are so proud of it. In other countries you don’t feel they’re so proud of their flag.

- Robert Frank, quoted in "The Man Who Saw America," by Nicholas Dawidoff, New York Times Magazine, July 2, 2015.

Photographic Quote of the Week: Harry Callahan

To be a photographer, one must photograph. No amount of book learning, no checklist of seminars attended, can substitute for the simple act of making pictures. Experience is the best teacher of all. And for that, there are no guarantees that one will become an artist. Only the journey matters.

-Harry Callahan

Multiple Exposure Tree, Chicago, Harry Callahan, 1956

Photographic Quote of the Week: Berenice Abbott

Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.

-Berenice Abbott

Blossom Restaurant; 103 Bowery. Oct. 3, 1935; by Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) from her "Changing New York" Works Progress Administration/ Federal Art Project

Photographic Quote of the Week: Edward Weston

Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.

 - Edward Weston

Pepper #30, Edward Weston, 1930

Photographic Quote of the Week: Garry Winogrand

I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.

 - Garry Winogrand

Albuquerque, Garry Winogrand, 1957

The Marbury Tree

I believe a turning point in my approach to photography occurred on a trip to England in 2008. My wife Mary, our friends Gay and Mike, and I visited a small town called Marbury. As we were walking through the cemetery of the town's church, the remnant of a gnarled old tree caught my eye. I had brought a Canon compact digital camera on the trip. I had done some 35mm SLR photography in the past, but when digital photography came along, I contented myself with a point-and-shoot.

An epiphany of sorts occurred when I walked around the tree and pointed the camera into the eroded interior of the trunk.

That photo showed me the potential of going beyond the representational vacation snapshot.