ocean beach wall, san francisco, ca
One of the things that I enjoy the most about writing a blog is that every Monday I post a Photo of the Week. These images are normally taken from my backlog of photographs. I must have at least 400,000 images by now just sitting around in slide pages, negative sleeves, CDs and DVDs. In fact I have so many images that I rarely get to see many of them. One of my goals is that when I post an image on Monday that I will go back into my archive to find photographs that I have not seen in some time.
The image above is from a series that I did around 2001 called ‘Man vs. Nature.’ It was a fine art series of black and white images that showed natural landscapes that had been invaded my something manmade. It was not designed to complement these manmade additions, but rather to criticize them. But I have never been much of a social commentary type of photographer. I have always wanted to be one of those image makers that could photograph horrific events and then show them to the world saying “look at how terrible this is.” That is why my photo heroes have always been mostly photojournalists and documentary photographers who peeled backed the niceities of the world and exposed them for all to see. That is one reason why my photography heroes include Sebastaio Salgado and James Nachtwey. If you are not familiar with the work of these photographers you really should research them. Salagado is a brilliant documentary photographer who has been photographing the poor people of the world for the past 25 years. His work is haunting and beautiful in its lighting and composition. Nachtwey is one of the leading war photographers in the world. Much of his work is downright disturbing to look at, but beautiful in composition. Both share a great deal in common. Both are making social statements, but wrapping it up in exquisite photography.
There are many reason why people photograph. The two photographers I mentioned above do it to enact social change. I do it more for the aesthetic of it. That is why I have always admired social change photography, but I have not been able to do it. I am attracted more by the forms and shapes of things and not the things themselves. I am draw to people more as graphic elements. I am more of a formalist. You can read more about this in ‘Photography Movements- Formalism.’
But besides this I think that an important reason that people photograph is to remember, to preserve memories. Whether we intend to do it or not, every photograph is a slice of a fraction of time, preserved. That is important. When I look at the image of the the beach above I can still remember standing there composing the picture, waiting for the light to glissen off of the sand just right, and feel how that wall was breaking the perfection of nature. I photograph to preserve memories because I believe that is important.
Gary Miller
Houston Fine Art Wedding Photographer
Eye Candy and Brain Veggies
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[...] pure style and my photo hero was Sebastaio Salgado. You can read more about him in my post ‘Why We Photograph.’ In graduate school I began to pursue more of a fine art direction and then applied it to a [...]