Bob Haft, from Evergreen State College, and 17 of his students were crowded into my basement office, on their tour of Seattle photography studios. I like having them come to visit. It makes me feel authoritative and experienced, but this crowd was more subdued than others that have been through. When I asked for some basic information, like how many of them were planning to pursue photography professionally, it was like pulling teeth to get a response. Only after we officially broke up as a group, and I got buttonholed by individuals, did their passion come through.
I talked about my own trajectory as a photographer, which includes my epiphany in Tucson in 1983, when I got a job as an assistant to a commecial photographer. It was my first glimmer of awareness that you could be a photographer without waiting tables. And that you could have fun taking pictures for a living. There was more to it than "selling out."
I never plan what I’m going to say at these presentations. Whatever is uppermost in my mind at that instant seems the most relevant to the occasion. Which is how I photograph, actually. I talked while I showed my Venice prints, first about how it is a great excuse to stand in one spot for a long period of time and examine all the cool details around you. Then I got into more woo-woo territory about how I construct a portfolio by showing it a lot, to varied audiences. It’s not necessary to get a direct response from a viewer to learn which photographs have a life outside of my own attachment to them. There’s something in the air, that I feel at that moment, that alerts me to whether a given photograph has legs or not. I just know.
Bob made a flippant comment that is too true at this moment in history to consider very deeply without becoming depressed. He is teaching traditional black and white technique, which he called, "The Latin of photography. It’s a good thing to teach. It’s fundamental to everything else." The obvious suggestion is that we are pursuing a dead craft out of nostalgic attachment. As we hurtle headlong into this digital nirvana, old geezers like myself are going to be shouting, Cassandra-like (we only wish), to the masses, "Remember where all this came from. Forget it at your peril."
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