"I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapon against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty." ~ Gordon Parks

“There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment.”
~ Robert Frank

From Plato’s Cave

‘A photograph is not just the result of an encounter between an event and a photographer; picture-taking is an event in itself, and one with ever more peremptory rights – to interfere with, to invade, or to ignore whatever is going on. Our very sense of situation is now articulated by the camera’s interventions‘. (pg. 11)

‘… there is something predatory in the act of taking a picture. To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed‘. (pg. 14).

From America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly

’To photograph is to confer importance. There is probably no subject that cannot be beautified; moreover, there is no way to suppress the tendency inherent in all photographs to accord value to their subjects’. (pg. 28).

From Melancholy Objects

‘But essentially the camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own‘. (pg. 57)

‘Photographs are, of course, artifacts. But their appeal is that they also seem, in a world littered with photographic relics, to have the status of found objects – unpremeditated slices of the world. Thus, they trade simultaneously on the prestige of art and the magic of the real. They are clouds of fantasy and pellets of information‘. (pg. 69).

"I have never taken a picture I intended. They are always better or worse.”  ~ Diane Arbus

As I became serious about my street photography, the images I created became deeply meaningful. Continually, I question why I create a given frame, and what does it say about me. I am continually inspired by a wide variety of visual art, other photographers, and the philosophy/psychology of photography.

I N S P I R A T I O N S

I am not interested in showing my work to photographers anymore, but to people outside the photo-clique."  My pictures are not escapes from reality, but a contemplation of reality, so I can experience life in a deeper way." ~ Bruce Davidson

"There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture.  Your eye must see a  composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment of the photographer is creative.  Oop! The Moment!  Once you miss it, it is gone forever."
~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

"You fill up the frame with feelings, energy, discovery and risk, and leave room enough for someone else to get in there.  Photography is about being exquisitely present." ~ Joel Meyerowitz

"Leaving aside the mysteries and the inequities of human talent, brains, taste, and reputations, the matter of art in photography may come down to this: it is the capture and projection of the delights of seeing;  it is the defining of observation full and felt."
~ Walker Evans

"I don't believe a person has a style.  What a person has is a way of photographing what is inside them. What is there comes out."
~ Sabastiao Salgado

"I am not interested in shooting new things—I am interested in seeing thing new."
~ Ernst Hass

“All art is a work in progress. It’s helpful to see the piece we’re working on as an experiment. One in which we can’t predict the outcome. Whatever the result, we will receive useful information that will benefit the next experiment. If you start from the position that there is no right or wrong, no good or bad, and creativity is just free play with no rules, it’s easier to submerge yourself joyfully in the process of making things. We’re not playing to win, we’re playing to play. And ultimately, playing is fun. Perfectionism gets in the way of fun. A more skillful goal might be to find comfort in the process. To make and put out successive works with ease.”

“The purpose of the work is to awaken something in you first and then allow something to be awakened in others and it’s fine if they’re not the same thing. We can only hope that the magnitude of the charge we experience reverberates as powerfully for others as it does for us.”

“The goal of art isn’t to attain perfection. The goal is to share who we are and how we see the world. Artists allow us to see what we are unable to see but somehow already know. “

“All that matters is the work itself. The art that actually gets made and how it’s perceived. You are you. The work is the work. Each person in the audience is themselves. Uniquely so. As artists we’re called to let go of these stories again and again and blindly put our faith in the curious energy drawing us down the path.”