Henry Wessel and me

Martin Stabler over at Sightlines called my attention to a review of Henry Wessel’s photographs in this past Sunday’s NYT Arts and Leisure section. It’s a good thing he did. The unread Sunday Times was in that big slush pile every newspaper subscriber has in their living room. Robin works through the paper all week, and yells at me if I try to recycle it prematurely.

The article mentions the influence that this relatively obscure photographer has had on a generation of photographers. In 1976 I was in a workshop taught by him at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts. I count myself as one of those so influenced, and he has been a seminal influence on my style for the past 30 years. His work appears casual and innocently snapshotish, but there is actually a deep formalism at work in the photos that rivals the precision of a Walker Evans.

In the article, Wessel speaks to a process I refer to often: "Part of it has to do with the discipline of being actively receptive. At the core of this receptivity is a process that might be called soft eyes. It is a physical sensation. You are not looking for something. You are open, receptive. At some point you are in front of something you cannot ignore."

There’s a hint in the article about a key part of the photographic feedback loop that doesn’t receive much attention. But it’s vital. Sure, you’re open and receptive, and the images are pouring through this process of yours. They’re piling up on the contact sheets, or the digital card. What then?

"One of Mr. Wessel’s rules is to put his contact sheets away for a year before deciding which images to print. ‘If you let some time go by before considering work that you have done, you move toward a more objective position in judging it,’ he said. ‘The pleasure of the subjective, physical experience in the world is a more distant memory and less influential.’"

That is a disciplined, rigorous solution. I wonder what my clients would think if I tried it?

Comments

[Blake]

Henry Wessel is a wonderful photographer and it's great to see him finally get some recognition. I think the timing of the Times article was related to the upcoming release of a book on him by Stiedl, actually a compilation of his first 5 books.

His comment about waiting a year to look at contacts is particularly acute. I think the most overlooked issue in the digital revolution is the transformation of the editing process. Shooting and editing are two very unique activities. In the film age they were naturally separated by the need to process film and make contacts, or in the case of Wessel an even longer division was enforced. But in the digital age every picture can be evaluated instantly, right after it is shot. If you are very disciplined you can wait a year to look at your digital images but I think most photographers glance at the camera back after each shot, deciding internally Yes or No? The whole process which used to be spread over weeks of thought is now compressed into seconds, and I think the fundamental importance of this constriction has been overlooked in all the digital hype about resolution, printing methods, etc.

[auspiciousdragon]

'Soft eyes'. I like it. What an excellent term for the feeling of seeing photographs.

One of the things that I find about waiting a while before editing and printing photos is that a smaller proportion get selected. I think this has to do with me seeing the neg/file for what it is rather than for what my memory says that it might have been. But it may also be something to do with the fact that in-arrears editing tends to be dealing with larger batches of photos....

The Stiedl book/collection is in-print.