Why Study the Masters? #2
Today’s answer: To push yourself.
April’s photographer is Charlie Waite. I came across his work last year and bought several of his books (most having to be imported from England), and spent quite a bit of time last year reading him. He’s the one who led me to Joe Cornish, who led me to . . . . That’s how it works.
I’d thought that I wasn’t going to study Charlie as part of this year-long project because I’d studied his work so recently. However, towards the end of last month a lot of thoughts started coming together, and then the Japanese Garden trip lit a fuse. As if you couldn’t tell by the frequency of my posting. Anyway, I feel as if I’m on the precipice of something if I keep working and studying. But being there is a nerve-wracking thing and I was feeling a bit unbalanced so instead of taking a deep-dive into Bruce Percy, I decided to seek a bit of grounding and to visit a familiar friend.
One might think of it as a safe, conservative choice. Even a step backwards. It hasn’t been. Fortunately, the thinking and work keep flowing and instead of just re-visiting what I already know, my time with Charlie this month has been spent flipping back and forth between different images, and then pulling out the photographers I’ve already studied this year and comparing their work, seeing similarities and, more importantly, the differences. It’s work. But that’s why they call it studying an artist instead of looking at an artist.
And studying the masters, truly studying them, doesn’t go without consequences to your own work. Which got me thinking about how they influence one’s work. There’s a trade-off here. On the one side, you have the quote often attributed to Picasso, “Good artists copy, great artists steal!” On the other side, one hears stories of photographers literally trying to find the tripod holes in the ground for famous images by Ansel Adams and numerous other landscape photographers. The question is, where is the line between imitation and inspiration that pushes your own work?
I’ve been lucky to be able to work beside Ann these past few years. I’ve come to realize (and accept), that I see and compose things in particular ways that Ann can’t (or doesn’t), and that she sees and composes things in ways that I can’t (I can say can’t because I’ve tried, and it’s not a matter of don’t, it’s can’t). And as fortunate as I am to have Ann help push me along, so too have the masters I’ve been studying. So the answer to the question above is to take what I’ve learned from these masters (and from Ann) - their approaches to photography, the principles that they’re working with - and apply that to how I see, how I approach a subject, and ultimately, how I understand what is before me. So I can make a better photograph.
Ann and I went out last weekend for a short, very short, photography trip. The blog post for that trip is forthcoming. For now I just want to share a few images from that day. Images that I might have made before this year’s studies, but probably not quite like these.
It’s not just the square format that makes these images different. There’s a certain sensibility to the simplicity of the image, the composition, and the need to make the image a whole - despite the simplicity - that I was very aware of when I was making the images. Something I hadn’t really been conscious of before, and that the masters have made me all too aware of now.
And that day, those thoughts and concerns were ever-present, regardless of where I was at or when during the day the image was made.
Sometimes I was successful, sometimes not. But I was quite aware that I’m working at something. I may not be sure exactly what it is, but I’m working at it. And the masters keep pushing me along.