“You just have to live and life will give you pictures,” Henri Cartier Bresson once said. As a photographer extraordinaire, he dedicated his life and art to capturing imagery he called the decisive moment; a spontaneous witness, a record that was never to be repeated. Generally, that’s not me —or my photography.
Beginning my photographic journey in journalism in college and professionally, I was trained to observe and tell a story. Editorial photography was an attempt to synthesize an event into context that allowed the viewer to gain both understanding and perspective of an unfolding world. Light, emotion, graphic intensity, and color all enrich and underpin this storytelling. Our world of nature, travel, and people offer unique and rich stories. While I am unsure how Henri Cartier Bresson set out on his world-view exploration, equipping oneself with the discipline of carrying the camera and then being in the frame-of-mind to capture that decisive moment. An attribute I will always envy.
Studying for a Master’s degree at the Art Institute of Chicago, students and faculty weekly met to evaluate and critique each other’s current projects. During one such critique, a fellow grad-student fleshed out a concept that has stayed with me. As a painter-photographer who simultaneously worked both mediums, he distinguished paintings as ideological compilations. He thought his photographs as individual brush strokes towards an extended journey.
So while I explore the natural and cultural world with camera in hand, I anticipate life’s moments of pageantry. However, rarely do I capture life’s spontaneity. Mostly I see, experience, and compose and wait. Then I capture life in its repetition. Amazingly, it often does just that—so these are those images from lightning striking again. Behaviors; nuances; contexts; repetition and pageantry. ..…Brushstrokes.ready