POST 8 9 & 10

# 8 My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.” ~Richard Avedon.

I think Avedon is speaking of his personal relationship with his photography. Perhaps his portraits are an extension of how he is feeling at the time. Perhaps he looks at them as interpretations of his own worldview. For example, he might take a picture of a homeless person to show the deterioration of his city.

I don’t feel that my photography is more about me that the subject. I think my photography is about capturing a moment in a person’s life. Then there’s the fact that my friends have commissioned me to take their Facebook profile pictures, which is all about them.

# 9 “You don't take a photograph, you make it.” ~Ansel Adams



I never thought about photography like this. When taking a photograph, you’re really not taking anything. If anything, you’re making a moment significant. When wind blows through woman’s hair, the sight is nothing out of the ordinary. When you make this image a photograph, It becomes something beautiful and important.

#10 “All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this - as in other ways - they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.” ~John Berger


I agree with parts of the quote, but not all of it. Photographs do remind us of what we forgot. I stumbled across a photo of myself and an estranged friend, and seeing how happy we were in that photo prompted me to call her. Nothing ever came of that call, but the point is that it made me remember something I’d forgotten.

I also agree that painters record what they remember, but I don’t agree that the photos change their meanings more that painting. There is constant debate of the Mona Lisa painting. To some people she is smiling or smirking and to others, she is a sad and scorned lover. The only one who truly knows is the painter.