“I photograph to find out what the world looks like in a photograph.”  Gary Winogrand

I’ve highlighted this quote before.  It resonates with me quite a bit, especially, in the last month or so. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been spending a significant amount of time in my darkroom catching up on printing. I have an October milestone of ten prints to be ready for review as part of Monalog’s Visions of America project and wanted to stay ahead of the power curve. Going through proof sheets of the past several years, to select images I have not printed before, I’ve had to be pretty selective, even with a project so potentially large in scope.

And though I had yet to make prints of these images, they were by no means also rans. It turns out I was pretty behind in my printing! Of course my situation wasn’t and will never be remotely like what they found after Winogrand passed away, when more than 2,500 roles of his exposed film were discovered that hadn’t been developed.  But this recent experience made me think about how much my thinking is consistent with what he said. As much I cherish the “journey” aspect of what I do, there is something about finding that picture that gets isolated in the viewfinder of my camera for the briefest moment of time. This is especially true for me when using a rangefinder.  It’s very much like looking through a window onto the world … my world. If fortune is on my side and I’m lucky to get a keeper or two from an outing I can make a print(s) that captures what I saw in my mind’s eye for the real prize!

Falling behind in one’s work is never a good thing and I’m going to try to be much better about this going forward. But I have to say that I have enjoyed all the catching up! During the coming year I will have a lot of photographic opportunities to find out what the world looks like in a photograph that hopefully will yield some exciting results. Of course all of the work I produce will be curated by someone else who may not see the world as I do, let alone value what I am trying to recreate. But I’m not thinking about that at all. And why should I … I’m enjoying myself too much!

Stay well,

Michael