SCC Student Exhibition @ the St. Peters Cultural Arts Center Oct 31 - Dec 22, 2014

Fall 2014 SCC Student Photography Books here!

For anyone interested in getting a sense of what we do in ART225 - Digital Photo II & ART299 - Adv. Independent Study, here are our most recent editions to the collection of books that we have been creating over the past three and a half years. I am really proud of all of the students and their hard work and enthusiasm that has gone into creating these books. The projects are a strong testament to their commitment to the creative process and elongated exploration of an idea. It is such a treat to witness the evolution of each body of work. We spend nearly 2/3's of the entire semester working on a body of work that researches & investigates a topic of their choosing and then we work through the process of organizing and shaping our photographs regarding that idea into a book format. We then publish them through blurb.com or sometimes we handmake our books depending on the project. C

Check 'em out!!

The artists will be giving talks about their work and their creative process on December 2 & 4 from 10-12:50pm in VAB107 at SCC.  This is event is free and open to all.  Please join us as we are looking for audience members! The more the merrier!


Fall 2014...
...in no particular order...

Often Overlooked   by Alli Keisker

Are You Listening?  by Sue Wolf












Black & White VS Color  by Dana Hayes

Bits & Pieces  by Brittnie Hughes

Disconnect  by Warren Rich










coming soon...


Leslie Jordan

Given Zane






Here are some links from previous semesters:

Spring 2014...

Castles in the Sky   by April Stout

The Possible Outcome   by Connor Lockett

Designated for Human Consumption   by Given Zane

Shelter Life   by Sue Wolf

From the River's Edge   by Erin Petty

Zoo Families   by Adam Hinton

Where the Black Top Ends   by Kayla Czajkowski

Music for Us   by Warren Rich

Indelible  by Lauren Ochs

A Peek Into Dissonance  by Henry Salazar



Spring 2013...

Ain't That America   by Jon Slade

In the Garage   by Michael Randman

Without Breaking   by Alex Little

Remembering the Past, Educating the Future   by Debbie Bauer

Missouri Barns   by Debbie Bauer

Dreams and Memories   by Anthony Medvick

In the City   by Jaimie Vaughn

Medals and Scars   by Kate Vohsen

The Independent Study Collection   by Megan Flattery



Fall 2012...

Itinerant Encounters    by Jon Slade

Life on the Water    by Michael Randman

CERT   by April Stout

Living in a Box   by Elizabeth Ache

Preserving Our Past Through Photographs - Saint Charles County, Missouri    by Zac Hodges

The Faces of New Melle    by Connor Lockett



Spring 2012...

Lena Wood, Metamorphose, 2012. 

Melisa Fielder-Spence, La Fleur, 2012. 

Mat Hoosier, Defying Gravity, 2012.

Phil Cary, MKT Line, 2012.

Megan Flattery, Familial, 2012. 

Raquel Engle, Half Closed Eyes, 2012.

Rachel Mitchell, Once Upon a Time, 2012.



Fall 2011...

Debbie Bauer, Missouri Barns, 2011.

Joshua Evans, Idiosyncratic Reality, 2011. 

Kimberly Wall, tirer le portrait, de toute notre, 2011.

Rebecca Chapman, Nature Untouched, 2011. 

Natalie Armitstead, Hidden Ballerina, 2011.

Eric Wuestenberg, Canyons in Utah, 2011.

Jade Roch Van Rochsburg, Spheres, 2011.

Allen Wilberton, St. Louis Spouthwestern Freight Depot: Space in History, 2011.




Lastly here is a link to our SCC Photography Department Books bookstore! 
We have many other collections of student work for you to enjoy. 

SCC Photography Department Book - Spring 2014

SCC Photography Department Book - Spring 2014

It is done!!
Order your copy today here...

http://www.blurb.com/b/5698485-pixels-and-grain

FYI - My copy was $36.60 with regular shipping

Things Your Photo Teachers Wishes You Knew Before Coming to Class

This is lovingly dedicated to my students!

http://www.popphoto.com/news/2014/08/things-your-photo-teacher-wishes-you-knew-coming-to-class

welcome back to school & to the process!!

Welcome back to the swing of things at the schoolhouse! For those of you who are new to my classes, glad to have you with us. The summer has absolutely flown by and with it's passing comes a new semester of projects and new friends. Here is a great article to bring us back into the moment and to start thinking about the creative process...

Why I've Gone Back to Shooting Film... And why you should too  @ fstoppers.com  
https://fstoppers.com/education/why-ive-gone-back-shooting-filmand-why-you-should-too-30630

FALL 2013 SCC Photography Area Blurb Book

For all the students from the fall, here is our department book!

Check it out or order from the link below if you are interested.

FALL 2013 SCC Photography Area Vol. 6

Our past semesters are available there as well!

Spring 2014 Digital Photography Student Books! Presentations May 6 & May 8!

For anyone interested in getting a sense of what we do in ART225 - Digital Photo II & ART299 - Adv. Independent Study, here are our most recent editions to the collection of books that we have been creating over the past three years. I am really proud of all of the students and their hard work and enthusiasm that has gone into creating these books. The projects in themselves are a strong testament to commitment and their elongated exploration of an idea. These are a real treat. We spend nearly 2/3's of the entire semester working on a body of work that researches & investigates a topic of their choosing and then we work through the process of organizing and shaping our photographs into a book format. We then publish them through blurb.com or sometimes we handmake our books depending on the project. Check 'em out!!

The artists will be giving talks about their work and their creative process on May 6 & 8 from 10-12:50pm in VAB107 at SCC.  This is event is free and open to all.  Please join us! The more the merrier!

Castles in the Sky   by April Stout

The Possible Outcome   by Connor Lockett

Designated for Human Consumption   by Given Zane

Shelter Life   by Sue Wolf

From the River's Edge   by Erin Petty

Zoo Families   by Adam Hinton

Where the Black Top Ends   by Kayla Czajkowski

Music for Us   by Warren Rich

Indelible  by Lauren Ochs


coming soon...

by Henry Salazar



Here are some links from previous semesters:

Spring 2013...

Ain't That America   by Jon Slade

In the Garage   by Michael Randman

Without Breaking   by Alex Little

Remembering the Past, Educating the Future   by Debbie Bauer

Missouri Barns   by Debbie Bauer

Dreams and Memories   by Anthony Medvick

In the City   by Jaimie Vaughn

Medals and Scars   by Kate Vohsen

The Independent Study Collection   by Megan Flattery



Fall 2012...

Itinerant Encounters    by Jon Slade

Life on the Water    by Michael Randman

CERT   by April Stout

Living in a Box   by Elizabeth Ache

Preserving Our Past Through Photographs - Saint Charles County, Missouri    by Zac Hodges

The Faces of New Melle    by Connor Lockett



Spring 2012...

Lena Wood, Metamorphose, 2012. 

Melisa Fielder-Spence, La Fleur, 2012. 

Mat Hoosier, Defying Gravity, 2012.

Phil Cary, MKT Line, 2012.

Megan Flattery, Familial, 2012. 

Raquel Engle, Half Closed Eyes, 2012.

Rachel Mitchell, Once Upon a Time, 2012.



Fall 2011...

Debbie Bauer, Missouri Barns, 2011.

Joshua Evans, Idiosyncratic Reality, 2011. 

Kimberly Wall, tirer le portrait, de toute notre, 2011.

Rebecca Chapman, Nature Untouched, 2011. 

Natalie Armitstead, Hidden Ballerina, 2011.

Eric Wuestenberg, Canyons in Utah, 2011.

Jade Roch Van Rochsburg, Spheres, 2011.

Allen Wilberton, St. Louis Spouthwestern Freight Depot: Space in History, 2011.

Please Congratulate Spring 2014 Boardroom Art Award Winners!

Spring 2014 Student Art Exhibition

Boardroom Awards

Category 1 – Drawing I

Emma Klein, “Self Study” (Mitchell)

Romel Hodges, “Dead Weight” (Wilson)

Category 2 – Drawing II

Nicole Harmer, “Still Life Drawing” (Smith)

Category 4 – Figure Drawing

Pacó Sutherland, “Staring Off” (Smith)

Category 5 – Graphic Design

Josh Weinhold, “ Visions of Storms” (Mogerman)

Category 6 – Sculpture

Dan Taszarek, “I am filled with many secrets” (Ouellette-Kirby)

Jennifer Meyer, “ The Stork has Landed” (Ouellette-Kirby)

Category 7 – Black & White Photography I

Darryl Glover, “Cabin in the Woods” (Fisher)

Category 8 – Digital Photography I

Erin Petty, “Rustic Regeneration” (Sanker)

Marrissa Scully, “The Losing Soul” (Sanker)

Category 9 – Advanced Black & White Photography

Julie Westrich, “Idea of Peace In a Fishtank” (Fisher/Ouellette-Kirby)

Cassie Gibson, “Obstacle of time and discovery” (Fisher/Ouellette-Kirby)

Vincent Dyer, “Forust of NO Return” (Fisher/Ouellette-Kirby)

Category 10 – Advanced Digital Photography

Given Zane, “Designated for Human Consumption” (Sanker)

Sue Wolf, “Jake Heels” (Sanker)

Henry Salazar, “Separation” (Sanker)

Category 11 – Design I

Sabrina Teeple, “My Mother’s Boyfriend Really Likes This Design” (Horvath)

Erin Petty, “Celestial Flare” (Smith)

Category 12 – Illustration & Design II

Megan McCully, “Totem” (Sheppard)

Category13 – Ceramics

David Wade, “Making Omlettes” (Meeks)

Category 14 – Jewelry

Desireé Cabell, “Born of Fire, Labour of Love” (Ouellette-Kirby)

Category 15 – Painting I

Kentrell Strong, “Monochrome Still Life” (Smith)

Nicole Harmer, “ The Red Teapot” (Smith)

Category 16 – Painting 2 & Advanced Painting

Sue Schmidt, “Color Movement” (Smith)

This is imperfect...

Check out this amazing little discussion on where one's work really comes from...

http://www.thisisimperfect.org/blog/2014/3/19/photographer-ryan-muirhead-talks-depression-creativity-and-what-it-means-to-be-human

My free Labrador pup... RIP Kai

“No matter how close we are to another person, few human relationships are as free from strife, disagreement, and frustration as is the relationship you have with a good dog. Few human beings give of themselves to another as a dog gives of itself. I also suspect that we cherish dogs because their unblemished souls make us wish - consciously or unconsciously - that we were as innocent as they are, and make us yearn for a place where innocence is universal and where the meanness, the betrayals, and the cruelties of this world are unknown.” 
― Dean Koontz, A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog


A week ago I had to make the very difficult decision to say goodbye to one of the most important relationships of my life. It has been my tradition to write about every one of my canine friends when they go as a way to tell their story, say goodbye, but also as a way to celebrate and create a space for healing. This time around it has taken every last ounce of determination for me to sit down and get out of my own way long enough to begin.

Over the years I have lovingly and commonly referred to our girl Kai as my "free Labrador puppy" but at any given moment one may have heard other names such as Kaya, Kai-dog, Cow-pie-ya, Kai-kai, Blondie, Peeps, Peepers, Yellow-dog, Whitey, Biscuit-head, Mama, Big Girl, Ole Girl, JYD, the Flying Dog, Killer, and many more...  some not so flattering. 

Kai came to me on one of the darkest days of my life, August 17, 2003 as I committed myself to the task of ending a relationship of sizable proportion. Since that day she has served as my constant calm companion, protector, and good luck charm against some of the greatest challenges that one can encounter in life. The crazier "life things" got, the calmer she became--a truly amazing and beautiful creature in everyway. She has been one of the greatest love affairs of my life. I suppose there are still some lessons to be learned here as I struggle to form words and clench my teeth every time I realize she is not immediately under foot or physically touching me in some way.

In order to crack open her story I asked my sister Becky, to whom I attribute a healthy amount of blame for our introduction, for a recap of Kai's entrance into our lives... 

"I remember walking up the loading dock at the Marriott for work and being immediately intercepted by our executive chef. He kept asking if my father wanted another Lab as we walked to the security office. There was a dog he wanted me to see, they found her that morning on the back dock trying to get to the dumpster.

 There she was – tied to a door-knob in the security office by a piece of rope. She was so calm, just sitting there staring at us, her appearance like she had made it through the wringer to get there. She had a weary, defeated look about her, like she’d experienced more of the wrongs of the world than the rights.  You’d have to have seen Kai then to truly appreciate exactly how far she came. We thought for sure she was much older, like 6 or 7 at least; her coat was dingy and roughed-up. There was a big old gash on the crown of her head and a raw ring of skin around her neck and maybe pregnant, not to mention just general scrapes and disarray. She seemed very sweet underneath it all, she wanted our attention, and she wanted us to stay. Obviously we couldn’t let the hotel manager see her.  Both of us being bleeding hearts we knew we couldn’t let her back out there and we just couldn’t call animal control. Dave said that we just had a few hours. That’s when I called Kate – happy about it or not, I wasn’t sure but she came right away. We were standing in the office waiting for her and one of the security guys kept saying that he was going to take this dog home with him, nice guy but a little short on brains. Kate heard it and I knew from one look at her face - that just wasn’t going to happen.

Off they went, days went by, no one stepped up to claim Kai - by then I don’t think Kate would have given her up." --Rebecca Sanker

 All of the above is true. There was a wire embedded in the skin of her neck and she was encrusted with so much dirt that I was pretty sure she was close to 100 years old. Come to find out when we washed away all of the grease and mud and put magic salve on her wounds that she was probably barely a year.

Once home, I bathed her, and then I began the process of dragging her from vet to vet looking for her owners, or a flyer, or any trace of what might have been her story. I called every shelter and posted dozens of signs in search of her family. Not a single person stepped forward...  So she met my little family of dogs, tried to kill both of them over their own bones and then promptly climbed up on to my lap, all 70 pounds of her, and fell fast asleep on my back porch. We would come to spend a incredible amount of time together on that back porch. 

A few weeks passed and I had her fixed. I gave her a real name thinking that we were the best place for her to be until...  Well that's the thing...  she must of known from the second that she leapt into my old green truck that she had finally found me. She perched on the console like we had just reunited after decades, maybe even lifetimes, and placed her head right under my arm and in my hand for our first drive home together. Funny, I don't think that if we were in the same location that we were ever more than a few feet from one another ever again, until now. And no, this is not even a mild exaggeration, this is the way that it has been for the last 11 years. I have loved every stinking minute of that girl's presence in my heart, even the really challenging ones.

We’ve been known for our parties with more dog guests than humans. She has had countless friends and companions. Nikko, Echo, Troy, Gilly, and a whole cast of other characters, but Delhi and Jack Rabbit Slim were her closest sibling rivals. She loved ice cream cone toys and most of all meaty bones fresh from the butcher. Let's just say that there were many near emergency vet visits for her and others due to her food-aggressive talents. I think she might have eaten herself to death if given the opportunity.

The first morning I let her sleep out in the house I woke up pinned by the shoulders to the bed gasping for air. She had laid across me, check to chest, paws pressing my shoulders down and she was literally breathing my breath. Shaken, yes. Convinced that I was about to be mauled to death in my sleep, no...  She was checking me for life, I believe. Other dear family and friends know this behavior of hers well, she could almost love you to death with her enormous capacity for physical affection. 

She also had an enormous capacity for pain. In fact I don't actually believe that she could feel it. I watched her tear into other animals and dogs. I have seen other dogs go after her and she always walked away completely cool and usually with little to no damage. Never a pretty sight, but it was the truth. She used to jump and climb amazing fences and chase me down the road no matter the vehicle or lack there of...  

Did I mention this dog could fly? We swam often in the river in the early days, and in friends pools. She could nearly clear most of them on the short side--a constant worry. She was built like a brick wall but just add water and she turned into an airborne superhero... She often times had to be removed by force from water so as not to make herself sick. In her later years she would often be Jack's tugboat, dragging him back to shore by his toy, as his lack of buoyancy would require.

She taught her boy Jack Rabbit everything she knew. Within the first five minutes of their initial meeting, otherwise known as his first serious brush with death, he fell madly in love with the amazing force of nature we called Kai. Needless to say he still thinks to this day that he is a retriever and not a German Shepherd.  

She raised our GSD Jack, she fostered our buddy Troy, and she helped nurse my old beagle mix Delhi back to life several times over. With the birth of our daughter Finley she came into her fully evolved role. She was and always had been the mommy-dog of all mommy-dogs and now her purpose could be completely realized. She did have to face off with the new found mobility that 6 month old Fin was acquiring, but only seconds after my swift and only real physical warning, Kai became the greatest nanny/nursemaid that a child could ever have. If you think that I am exaggerating any of this, then there is no need to read further. 

Every nursing, nap, mealtime, dinner, bath time, bedtime, dress-up time, morning walk, coming and going was accompanied by Kai. Finley had a hand, a head, or a foot on that dog probably 75% of the time that they spent together in the day/night. Fin is three years old as of this draft and is devastated by the loss of her best friend and surrogate. She is articulate enough to tell me every chance she gets as well. I know that it will pass, but I also know that there is no true love quite like this kind. Unbound, solid, present, un-expectant, and unwavering. Love that simply is. It is like earth--it was Kai. Ever present in the middle of the children and their toys, the louder and the more chaotic things got, the more she inhabited her space--she seemed to be like the eye of my life storms. 

Her super tolerance I believe is why we never suspected for a second that at the age of 12 years she had anything wrong with her, other than the fact that she was stealing a little too much of Jackie-boy's food. Her coat was luxurious, dreamy in fact. Her teeth were that of a young pup's. Two weeks prior to her finally telling me that something was very wrong she snuggled with me one evening while reading and unwinding from the day and I sensed that something was off. She was such a familiar to me I could almost always anticipate what was coming from her. Our radars have always overlapped no matter the event... danger, mischief, rain, shine, labor, etc... it was not a talent, it was just this way. I was hers. She was mine. Although other humans have come and gone, there were no other options and no one nearly as steady or as trustworthy. 

On Friday morning she would not get out of the bed. Her breath was shallow. I could barely get her to walk down the 2 flights of steps to the backyard. I had to carry all 90lbs of her back up to the main floor. She laid in the entryway with us taking turns holding her and petting her until we could get her to the vet when they opened. Again, I hoisted her up and carried her into the vet. It was the first time that she had ever resisted going in, even as I carried her. 

They found three things, fluid building up around her heart making it very hard for her to breathe, some changes in her bronchial passages, and a BB in her chest wall. The BB was unrelated to her pericardial infusion, but it is further proof of her long suspected pain threshold.

I know that I my choice to save her from suffering was the most important and courageous thing that I could possibly do for my friend. She deserved to be honored with as dignified a passing as I could provide for her after all of these years of love and service. She had told me it was time. Finley and Jack said their goodbyes and then went out with Grandma & Grandpa. Erik & I held her tight as she was sedated and then softly went to sleep. As she was nuzzling in, just as she always did, I hoped that she was dreaming she was snuggling down into the family nest for a glorious nap with her people.

My lessons from this biscuit colored beauty abound and continue even as I type. I am completely comfortable admitting that I am utterly lost without her. I am also unafraid to look all of this in the face. If the most important thing that we can do for one another in this short life is to show up, then I am there, especially for Kai. 

Right now, I am looking out for her light in all of the recent darkness that surrounds me. She always knew what to do...  I am trying to embody her example in almost everyway.

Rest in peace my sweetest free pup, you are forever my heart. 

I am the luckiest gal around to have had the honor of having been chosen and loved by you, but also to love such an amazing being. 

My undying love & gratitude to you for busting my heart wide-open and keeping me safe.

All in all, I can not help but feel as though we are not finished. Until then... 

On a terribly windy & bitterly cold morning...

...this might make you feel a bit warmer...

http://www.michaelkenna.net/interviews/hokkaido_j.html

10 Must-See Museum Photo Shows of Spring 2014

I would give anything to see the Frida show...

10 Must-See Museum Photo Shows of Spring 2014

5-Year-Old Daughter Stars in Old Masters' Paintings as Photographs...

This is the best!!

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/bill-gekas-old-classic-paintings-photography

SCC Scholarship listings...

Thought some of you might be interested in some free money for school...
So many of these go unclaimed each semester...

Heads up!


http://www.stchas.edu/scholarships/

Please enter St. Charles Community College's Juried Exhibition! Deadline: January 29, 2014

Dear friends, Please take a minute and enter our juried exhibition show casing artists from the surrounding area. The entry fee is super reasonable. 

Follow the link below for more details. Deadline: January 29, 2014.

SCC Juried Exhibition, Art Exhibition, March 3-April 11   

PDF Entry Form

Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus 

In the spirit of prep for the first day of the new semester I spent some time looking at all of the Diane Arbus quotes that I have collected over the years...  

I also came across this blog post regarding her work.

Enjoy.

http://www.theincoherentlight.com/2011/08/diane-arbus-some-thoughts-on-problem-of.html

A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.

I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.

The more specific you are, the more general it'll be.

I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse.

Nothing is ever the same as they said it was.

The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way.

Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding.

What moves me about… what's called technique... is that it comes from some mysterious deep place. I mean it can have something to do with the paper and the developer and all that stuff, but it comes mostly from some very deep choices somebody has made that take a long time and keep haunting them.

The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.

My favorite thing is to go where I've never been.

Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats.

You see someone on the street, and essentially what you notice about them is their flaw.

There are an awful lot of people in the world and it's going to be terribly hard to
photograph all of them...

Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo
cookies.

I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do -- that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse.

If I were just curious, it would be very hard to say to someone, "I want to come to your house and have you talk to me and tell me the story of your life." I mean people are going to say, "You're crazy." Plus they're going to keep mighty guarded. But the camera is a kind of license. A lot of people, they want to be paid that much attention and that's a reasonable kind of attention to be paid

Some pictures are tentative forays without your even knowing it. They become methods. It's important to take bad pictures. It's the bad ones that have to do with what you've never done before. They can make you recognize something you hadn't seen in a way that will make you recognize it when you see it again.

I work from awkwardness. By that I mean I don't like to arrange things. If I stand in front of something, instead of arranging it, I arrange myself.

The Chinese have a theory that you pass through boredom into fascination and I think it's true. I would never choose a subject for what it means to me or what I think about it. You've just got to choose a subject - and what you feel about it, what it means, begins to unfold if you just plain choose a subject and do it enough.

The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way.

These are characters in a fairy tale for grown-ups. Wouldn't it be lovely? Yes.

I used to have this notion when I was a kid that the minute you said anything, it was no longer true. Of course it would have driven me crazy very rapidly if I hadn't dropped it, but there's something similar in what I'm trying to say. That once it's been done, you want to go someplace else. There's just some sense of straining.

I’m very little drawn to photographing people that are known or even subjects that are known. They fascinate me when I’ve barely heard of them.

Photography was a license to go whenever I wanted and to do what I wanted to do.

I’ve got incredible power in my closet. Not power to do harm--just the feeling that I’ve captured people who have since died and people who will never look that way again. The camera is cruel, so I try to be as good as I can to make things even.

I don't know what good composition is.... Sometimes for me composition has to do with a certain brightness or a certain coming to restness and other times it has to do with funny mistakes. There's a kind of rightness and wrongness and sometimes I like rightness and sometimes I like wrongness.

For me the subject of a picture is always more important than the picture. And
more complicated.

One thing that struck me very early is that you don’t put into a photograph what’s going to come out. Or, vice versa, what comes out is not what you put in.

Choosing a project can be ironic. Everybody’s got irony. You can’t avoid it. It’s in the structure, the detail, the significance...What I mean is, I would never choose a subject for what it means to me. I choose a subject and then what I feel about it

I remember a long time ago when I first began to photograph I thought, there are an awful lot of people in the world and it’s going to be terribly hard to photograph all of them, so if I photograph some kind of generalized human being, everybody’ll recognize it. It’ll be like what they used to call the common man or something. It was my teacher, Lisette Model, who finally made it clear to me that the more specific you are, the more general it’ll be.

Lately I’ve been struck with how I really love what you can’t see in a photograph. An actual physical darkness. And it’s very thrilling for me to see darkness again.

Recently I did a picture—I’ve had this experience before--and I made rough prints of a number of them. There was something wrong in all of them. I felt I’d sort of missed it and I figured I’d go back. But there was one that was just totally peculiar. It was a terrible dodo of a picture. It looks to me a little as if the lady’s husband took it. It’s terribly head-on and sort of ugly and there’s something terrific about it. I’ve gotten to like it better and better and now I’m secretly sort of nutty about it.

One thing I would never photograph is a dog lying in the mud.

Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner. Even if you are behind, a sustained look of control and confidence can give you a mental edge that results in victory.

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.

There's a kind of power thing about the camera. I mean everyone knows you've got some edge. You're carrying some magic which does something to them. It fixes them in a way.

Photography is "real" because the camera is "recalcitrant". It's determined to do one thing and you may want another.

For me the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture. And
more complicated. I do have a feel for the print but I don't have a holy feeling for it.

Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats.

Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot. It was one of the first things I photographed and it had a terrific kind of excitement for me. I just used to adore them. I still do adore some of them. I don't quite mean they're my best friends but they made me feel a mixture of shame and awe. -

It's always seemed to me that photography tends to deal with facts whereas film tends to deal with fiction.