“A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph per se. [It] carries with it another thing, a quality that the artist responds to….
“The documentary photographer is trying to speak to you in terms of everyone’s experience.”
– Dorothea Lange
Sometime I question my email newsletter. I know that I love the process of reflection and everything I learn from writing it. But is it worthwhile? For you? For me? Maybe it is silly for a photographer to spend an hour every week writing instead of photographing.
While I do not consider myself a purist documentary photographer (or a purist anything, for that matter) this quote by Dorothea Lange jumped off the page at me this morning while flipping through one of the books I checked out from the Ortega library. Especially the part about “a quality the artist responds to.”
I embrace the fact that my presence alters your reality. I know that the photographs that I take and that I select are influenced by my perspective. All photographs are. No photograph is impartial.
What does this mean for you and me? It means that my presence and my perspective are integral to the photographs we create together. The eyes through which I see the world are the eyes through which I photograph your world.
So this newsletter is my attempt to show you what I see. That is why it is sometimes quite personal, why it is always honest. If you are going to hire me to make pictures of your family, you should connect with the way I see the world.
Join me in my weekly newsletter to learn about the lens through which I see your world.
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