Photograph by Joel Meyerowitz, Red Interior, 1977

I first saw the Shore and Meyerowitz photographs in a Color Technique photography class taught by Steve Mosch. Ever since then, I always come back to these as what sparked my interest in the landscape as a subject.

Photograph by Joel Sternfeld, After a Flash Flood, Rancho Mirage, California, July 1979

I first saw this photograph when I was living in Los Angeles, and it was one of the first disaster photographs that I really found interesting upon a second look. What I found the most compelling about Sternfeld’s photographs was that they required close study, and that they always worked best in a larger body of work. The book American Prospects is probably one of the biggest influences on my work.

Photograph by Alec Soth, Helena, Arkansas

Alec Soth’s project Sleeping by the Mississippi was influential in many ways for my work. The straightforward portraiture mixed with landscapes was not something I had really seen before, except in Sternfeld’s work. However, Alec’s images were much more geographically focused, which really changed the way I thought about photo projects. I became interested in defining place in my work.

Photograph by Edward Burtynsky, Shipyard #5, Qili Port, Zhejiang Province, 2005

Photograph by Edward Burtynsky, Nickel Tailings No. 34 & 35, Sudbury, Ontario 1996

Burtynsky’s work was really the first time I had seen work that dealt so effectively with our relationship with the earth and the idea of sustainability.

Photograph by Robert Dawson, Flooded Salt Air Pavilion, Great Salt Lake, Utah

I found Dawson’s work interesting, especially the work he did on The Water in the West project. His and the other photographers’ work on the project led to my interest in the idea of the ownership of water.

Photograph by Jem Southam, The Pond at Upton Pyne January 1997 (diptych), 1997

Jem Southam’s work at Upton Pyne was fascinating to me. By returning to the same property over several years to document only the seasons and the small changes the residents were making, he created quite a subtle body of work.

Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Jeff Rich for our Visual Influences Series.
View a selection of Rich’s photography featured on One, One Thousand in July 2011.
Visit Rich’s website: jeffreyrich.com
Purchase a copy of Rich’s first monograph Watershed on Photo-eye.

"The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, - all in one." - John Ruskin

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(We also wanted to add that when we asked for this list of songs, Pamela Pecchio not only delivered it to us quickly, but she did it while she was in labor! That’s about as heavy metal as you can get. We hope visitors enjoy this playlist, and congratulations to Pamela on a beautiful baby girl!)

Click here to see more of Pamela Pecchio’s "On Longing, Distance and Heavy Metal."

These Arms Are Snakes - Angela’s Secret

Motörhead - Devils

Metallica - Blackened

Black Sabbath - Behind the Wall of Sleep

Black Sabbath - Hole in the Sky

Ronnie James Dio - Rainbow in the Dark

Motörhead - Lost in the Ozone

Black Sabbath - Snowblind

Editor’s Note: You can view a selection of Pamela Pecchio’s photography featured on One, One Thousand in January 2012. You can also view more of Pecchio’s photography on her website: pamelapecchio.com.

"The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, — all in one." — John Ruskin

You can friend One, One Thousand on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to One, One Thousand’s Blog Feed.

                          

Influences—like taste, like mood, like aesthetics—are ever-shifting. I am inspired all the time, mostly by artists not practicing in the medium of photography. It was an interesting task to focus on the artists or images, within this discipline, that have continually been a source of affirmation. Is influence actually a source of affirmation? I think so. When you see something you respond to, it is confirmation that what you like, what you are drawn to, has succeeded and is held up either in a gallery show or in exhibition, or printed in a book, as something to value. When I am down on myself, my work, my life, it is their writing, images, or continued support that prop me up.

I learned from this exercise, which began, of course, with Which? I spent days thinking about it, trying to come up with one image here, one image there, but I couldn’t. I just don’t ponder individual images as much as I thought I did. Then, one free evening in my studio I pulled up a chair and sat quietly in front of my books. Here. This is where I would find it. There are only a handful of artists whose names appear multiple times in these shelves. That was my first realization in this process—it isn’t a single image that I take inspiration from—it is stories. I want the full narrative. These books magically give something new every time I look at them. Maybe it’s why many of my books remain wrapped for months —I don’t want to begin the natural process of unraveling that happens when I start to lose interest. The books I list below are well-worn and have borne my unending scrutiny with both dignity and beauty.

So, I give you four books that I have succumb to countless times and a fifth photographer who has not been published, but should be.

George Tice: Urban Landscapes
I met George Tice in 2005 while taking his printing workshop in Maine. I can’t really describe the feeling of seeing his prints in person, but when I did, I knew his would be the measure by which I judge my own work—forever. When people ask me, How do you make such beautiful prints?, I can’t often answer them. I feel that 80% of what makes a good printmaker is knowing, intuitively, what the print should look like. Intuition is the most difficult skill to teach, and learn. I remember George saying that it took him 20 years to learn how to print one image. He embodied everything I wanted to be in a photographer, printer, composer, and champion of the urban landscape.

While all of his books have inspired me in some way, it is Urban Landscapes that has had the greatest impact. In images like "Tenement Rooftops, Hoboken, October, 1974," Oak Tree, Homdel, May, 1970," "Petit’s Mobil Station, Cherry Hill, November, 1974," Men’s Room, Hotel Shelburne, Atlantic City, April, 1975," and especially, "Water Tower, Rahway, December, 1994," I have found direction when lost, and reassurance that although it may not bring recognition, subtle image-making brings the ultimate reward. Shortly after meeting him, I started my first body of work titled The Other Charleston (thank you One, One Thousand for exhibiting that work on this website). Without seeing Urban Landscapes I doubt I ever would have made that series, which was a jumping off point for the work I did in Nova Scotia.

In my copy of Urban Landscapes, George wrote, "For Lauren, who knows a good print when she sees one." I think he wrote that jokingly because I had so clearly been mesmerized by his prints, or maybe that is an inscription he uses often. All I know is that after taking Tice’s workshop, I have spent my artistic life becoming as capable as I could at making and knowing good prints.

Sally Mann

Who hasn’t been influenced by Sally Mann? I heard her talk about her work at the Corcoran Gallery of Art a few years ago. Of course I was mesmerized by her images and her honest explanations for them. While her imagery is extremely seductive, what influenced me the most about her work is how reflective of her personal life it is—from the portraits of her kids, to her dogs, to the land around her, and her husband. Her persistent, unapologetic photographs that are as much about her as anything else, are what continually give me the courage to share so intimately the events, failures and triumphs in my own life.

The book of Sally’s that I return to over and over again is What Remains. Lately, I have been trying to add more and more layers to each of my series. To make an initial statement, but then, slowly, encourage the viewer to realize that while yes, the work is about that initial statement, it is also about this, and also about that. What Remains is a perfect example of what builds and builds. With the hurried pace we live in now, with distractions and the temptation to build a new series faster and faster, Sally reminds me that a portfolio built over years can have the most lasting effect. From the start of this book, when she photographs her dog that has just passed, to focusing on dead human bodies rotting in the land, to then turning her camera back on her own kids, you realize that she is taking us on a full ride of human emotion, from sadness, to fear, to hope. I’m not sure if I’ve ever or will ever achieve that kind of accomplishment in one series, but I am more frequently trying, always with What Remains as my guide.

Tyler Boley

I met Tyler in 2007 while taking his workshop in Vermont at Jon Cone’s studio. I was there because despite Tice’s incredible work in the darkroom, I wanted to switch from darkroom printing to digital output and in my quest for achieving the best possible inkjet prints, I heard about Tyler and Jon, and went up to take a workshop surrounded by the best equipment and minds making pigment prints.

I needed to learn from Tyler how to achieve the level of quality and craft in printing that I had learned from George Tice. The first day he spent hours laying out a ton of prints, some his, some from others’ work that he had printed, both in black and white and color. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I got goose bumps looking at the black and white photographs, I had never seen such beautiful prints in my life, darkroom or digital. The tone of the prints and the perfect execution left me speechless. I was printing on glossy paper up to that point, and was stunned by the soft beauty of the work on the matte paper. Seeing George Tice’s Urban Landscapes years earlier had confirmed for me what kind of photographer I wanted to be. Seeing Tyler’s prints confirmed for me what kind of printer I wanted to be.

During that week, and the years that have followed, Tyler has generously helped me reach the level of craft that I had dreamed of. He helped me bridge the gap from merely having good negatives, to producing good photographs. I would never have been able to reach the point I have without his help. Whenever someone looks at a print and says, "I didn’t know inkjet prints could look like this," I think of Tyler and how many people he has helped, people he’s never met, nor ever will likely meet—people who have no idea that they are benefiting from his expertise. All of us photographers that really care about the craft of printing are indebted to him and his willingness to experiment and push the boundaries of printing in ways that haven’t trickled down to the masses.

Of all of the people listed here, it is Tyler who has a daily effect. I find his photographs to be a continual reminder that we are merely trespassing on the land, temporary visitors that will be gone long before the fields that he photographs. He has photographed one subject—the Pacific Northwest—for decades. I wish I had that level of commitment and patience. He keeps me in line when I get frustrated by the lack of craft I see, he encourages me when the disappointment from failure becomes overwhelming, and scolds me when my ego gets the better of me. He is the mentor I have needed and wanted.

I spent 5 days up in his studio this past May printing for a show for a new series of work. At one point, I told him, "I don’t think I would be photographing if it weren’t for you." Tyler is not one for sentimentality, and frankly, I’m not either. With all that I’ve gone through in the last 5 years, divorce, health problems, and the highs and lows of an artistic life, I have become less and less able to clearly articulate being grateful to those I am closest to. I don’t think Tyler believed what I said, he tried to tell me "No, you’d be doing it, just in a different way maybe." No, I wouldn’t.

Raymond Meeks

I was introduced to Raymond Meeks in Maine in 2007 in Tim Whelan’s fantastic photography bookshop. I didn’t meet the man, but was introduced to Sound of Summer Running. I used to go into Tim’s shop, usually once a year in summer, look for hours at the books I didn’t have access to at home, and talk with Tim about his favorites. I remember seeing Raymond’s book and wanting it immediately. From the elegant title to the images to the layout and design of the book, I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. I still can’t.

Little did I know that we would both decide to move to Portland, Oregon in October of 2008. Since then, I have gotten to know Ray Meeks and have had the ability, simply because we live in the same town now, to follow his creations more closely.

What he continually shows me is that photographs do not need to always develop into a novel. They can, when called upon, work equally as well, or even better, as novellas. I believe the poetic quality of my second book, Silence is an Orchard, would not have been possible without seeing the power of what Ray can do with a small number of images. I think in particular of the small artist book he published about his son titled Middle Air.

Raymond Meeks is also a tough and honest critic, which is jarring because his personality is so mild-mannered. I met him for the first time at Photolucida 2009. He reviewed my work then and told me, "You’re all over the place." I hadn’t heard that before. That comment has stuck with me and I can now see what he meant. I have been able to use that one piece of honest commentary to make my work tighter and stronger. He is one of the few reviewers I know who is respectful enough to tell someone, for example, that they’re too reliant on a particular aesthetic. Brave and honest. I have learned how to be a better reviewer and teacher by listening to him talk about other photographer’s work as well as my own. Ray has become someone I rely on to measure whether I’m improving and how to still grow, experiment and learn.

Robert Adams

At some point, I realized that what I’ve learned individually from the photographers above—the importance of craft, making art that is equally about the environment as it is about yourself, respect for the landscape, photography as short story as well as epic drama and beauty, beauty, beauty—together existed in one artist. Artistically, Robert Adams continues to have the greatest influence on my work.

While I could talk about the power of his photographs, from Turning Back to Summer Nights, Walking to Questions for an Overcast Day to one of my personal favorites, I Hear the Leaves and Love the Light, it is his writing that guides me and my work on a day-to-day basis. Beauty in Photography is my bible. There is so much in this book that I believe in, that describes why I photograph and put up with so much of the difficulty that comes with choosing a creative life.

One of my favorite quotes from the book is, "Making photographs has to be, then, a personal matter; when it is not, the results are not persuasive. Only the artist’s presence in the work can convince us that its affirmation resulted from and has been tested by human experience. Without the photographer in the photograph the view is no more compelling than the product of some anonymous record camera, a machine perhaps capable of happy accident but not of response to form."

I could argue that in this one quote lays the foundation of who I am, who I have strived to be, and who I hope to become as a photographing artist.

From his commitment to the environment, to the amazingly subtle beauty in his images, to the wisdom in the advice and example he sets for young photographers, I can’t image Robert Adams not having an influence on who I am as a photographer and person.

Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Lauren Henkin for our Visual Influences Series.
View a selection of Henkin’s photography featured on One, One Thousand in June 2011.
You can also view more of Henkin’s work at her website laurenhenkin.com, and you can learn more about Lauren’s latest publication "Growth" here.

"The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, — all in one." — John Ruskin

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Photograph by Tseng Kwong Chi, Pisa, Italy, 1989

There aren’t many Asians in Memphis. I feel there is an open racism I have come to familiarize myself with. As a result, this racism makes me realize how isolated I am because of my body’s genetic inheritances. When I turned the camera on myself while I lived in New York, I couldn’t help but feel that the self-portraits I made were going to inherit this Asianness as well.

Tseng Kwong Chi’s East Meets West are black and white self-portrait photographs made in front of popular tourist attractions. Chi wears a Mao Suit and mirrored sunglasses while holding a shutter release cable. He photographed these primarily in the United States, Europe, and "elsewhere." His glasses hide his slanty eyes and his Mao Suit may be the only sign to inform a Chinese quality to him and his photographs. But I love his obscured face. His almost impassive, expressionless face is why I pay most attention to body language, facial expressions, and manners in my own photographs. This carried over when I began to explore performative-type photographs.

Photograph by Lilly McElroy, I Throw Myself at Men #10, 2007

My understanding of performance art in relation to photography has been the distinctions between documents of a performance and photographs made by a performance.

Lilly McElroy’s I Throw Myself at Men made me understand the dynamics between photographer and subject(s). In extension, after compiling forty-something images of my kissing series (Return to Sender), I realized the difference between staging and hyper-awareness. In her series of photographs, Lilly McElroy makes several aggressive acts towards unsuspecting men. Yet, these images of a repeated action done to several men don’t represent staging to me.

Photograph by Melissa Alfonso, Rising Hunter

These repetitive images remind me the of seriality attached to photography. My favorite body of work has to do with an incompleteness, which in turns, conveys a sort of haunting within the narrative. Melissa Alfonso’s series, Rising Hunter, does this. I heard hauntings have a lot to do with jealousy. The imagery captured by her invokes a jealousy I share with wanting to belong.

Photograph by Mikael Kennedy, Passport to Trespass

In China, curators and historians debate the validity of photography—as do many here—whether or not it can be art or a record. Mikael Kennedy’s Passport to Trespass is a long documentation of his travels. He shoots Polaroids. The portraits are telling, coupled with the Polaroid’s distinct romanticized color—something I desire when photographing people.

Photograph by Amy Stein, Third Street, Memphis, TN

Amy Stein’s Stranded series captures automobile breakdowns. She says, "I’m interested in the idea of a breakdown as a sort of existential failing."

These mechanical breakdowns cause the subjects to become aware of their helplessness. The interruption to the subjects’ planned arrivals puts them in a foreign state in foreign surroundings. The breakdowns also remind me of failures as felt through the history of the South. Amy Stein’s series motivates me to capture a South that is at once familiar and strange to me—as my great-grandparents are from Southern China, as I am from the Southern United States— in order to evade further confirmation of an identity I do not feel I own.

Ownership is a very profound reality for me. It is something I find in each of these photographers. Physically looking at photographs, I feel that I am not allowed or not given the right to do so. But I continue on with my negotiations.

Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Tommy Kha for our Visual Influences Series.
View a selection of Kha’s photography featured on One, One Thousand in April 2011.
You can also view more of Kha’s work at his website: tommykha.com

"The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, — all in one." — John Ruskin

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When I was a boy, my family vacationed at the New Jersey Shore (yes, that Jersey Shore) usually during the last two weeks of August. We’d spend sunny afternoons on the beach. As the sun went down, I’d sense a shift in the atmosphere—not only did the fading light change the way things looked, it changed the feeling of the place. (Years later, working as a route driver in Northern New Jersey, I noticed similar shifts as weather and the seasons changed. I’d drive the same roads through the same towns, and yet no two trips were identical, either visually or emotionally.) Light’s effect on the appearance of things, and its influence on mood and atmosphere, was starting to make an impression.

Photograph by Harry Callahan, Cape Cod, 1972

Photograph by Harry Callahan, Cape Cod, 1972

When I was fifteen, I began taking pictures with a Kodak Instamatic camera. (This was in the late 1960s.) The drugstore prints I had made never matched the impact of what I had originally seen. To my disappointment, those drab color pictures always seemed to diminish the subject.

That disappointment might have ended my interest in photography had it not been for the gift of a Swinger. The Polaroid Swinger ^[1] was a popular camera made of white plastic manufactured between 1965 and 1970. The camera produced black-and-white prints in ten seconds, and provided me with a unique and different way of seeing things.

The first time I shot with the Swinger, I walked the same route I used to get to high school and back. It was Saturday and the sun was shinning. I took the first picture of someone’s front yard, and put the resulting print in my shirt pocket. When I approached that same yard an hour later, the sky had clouded over. I pulled out that first print—and in the print the sunlight remained. When I compared the two—the scene in front of me and the black-and-white image—it proved to be a revelation. The light was different, of course, but the subject looked different, too.

The photograph allowed me to see the subject as geometry and form. In the print, the lawn appeared as texture, the house as a rectangle, the roof as a trapezoid, the bushes as ovals, and the power cables as lines. The print also retained the light that was present when I took the picture, and that light was transformed as well—the leaves on the bushes glittered. If the camera was capable of capturing sunlight (or any kind of light, for that matter) the photographic process could distill it and make it stronger.

I was hooked, and eager to look at more photographs. I became a regular at the local library.

Peter Simon’s Moving On, Holding Still (Left) Photograph by Kiki McEntee, Peter Simon, Tree Frog Farm, June 1971 (Right)

Peter Simon’s ^[2] Moving On, Holding Still (1972) was one of the handful of photography books in our "library," two large rooms in the downtown Municipal Building. Although the others were how-to books, Simon’s was the most instructive. (Since I’m self-taught I used photography books as textbooks.)

Simon’s monograph is composed of black-and-white pictures of an array of subjects—from protests in Washington, DC, to the celebration of a sunset on a commune in Vermont—that reflect the dynamic nature of the 1960s and early 1970s. Poring over these images again and again was my "foundation class" in photography.

My first lesson came courtesy of the cover image. The subject, a tire swing, is very close to the center of the frame—something the how-to books advised against. "Rules" shouldn’t be taken too seriously, I realized.

The book also introduced me to the consideration of scale in the presentation of photographs. Some of the pictures filled the page while others were considerably smaller, and yet the size of each suited the subject. Also new to me was the concept of pairing images to form diptychs. I saw that by placing images side-by-side you can introduce narrative, enhance compositions, etc. These are concepts I still keep in mind when presenting my work today.

One other lesson was perhaps the most valuable. In studying these photographs I noticed that, in a picture, things in the background and things in the foreground are all equally visible, and therefore equally important. (Emmet Gowin has stated this succinctly: Everything in a photograph matters.)

Photograph by Peter Simon, Isolation, Iowa, 1968

Photograph by Peter Simon, A late winter snow…, Mass., 1970

Simon’s book led me to a crucial understanding of one of the things I find so challenging and stimulating about photography—it is the construction of pictures, the careful putting-together of everything in a scene. When working within the two-dimensional limits of the photograph, the spatial characteristic of depth does not exist. Foreground objects and background objects need to be dealt with equally; they’re your building materials. Move the camera even slightly, and your composition changes. Ever since then the idea of making pictures versus taking pictures has been more than mere semantics.

Peter Simon, Geometric Progressions, Cambridge, MA, 1969

Peter Simon’s photographs, of both turbulent and tranquil events, are records of acutely felt moments. Decades later, I can still recall my favorites. I feel very fortunate to have found this book when I was receptive to its lessons.

In 1974, after being hobbled by a Kalimar for a couple of years, I purchased my first serious 35mm camera, a Canon FTb. At around the same time I began frequenting the newspaper store at the end of my block. There I found yearly special issues of a photography magazine, Popular Photography, and copies of an alternative New York City weekly, The Village Voice.

The Popular Photography Annual introduced me to many of the photographers whose work I admire today: Harry Callahan, Lee Friedlander, Ray Metzker and others. The Annual showcased art photographs, not commercial shots or photojournalism. And while photography is well-suited for advertising and recording world events, the work in the Annual showed me that the medium is no less effective at recording an "event" as simple (and profound) as an artist’s perception of beauty.

Photographs from Sylvia Plachy’s Found Memories (Left) and Cruising (Right)

The Village Voice arrived at the newspaper store every Thursday morning. Week after week for eight years, Sylvia Plachy’s amazing photographs were featured on Page 3. Whether the subject was a cat up a tree or a squeegee guy at work, the images had an immediacy and spontaneity about them that belied their visual sophistication. One had the feeling Plachy carried a camera with her everywhere, and that, without preconceptions, discovered photographs along the way (a working habit I adopted).

Also significant were two more monographs, both by master photographers.

Paul Caponigro’s Landscape and Joel Meyerowitz’s Cape Light

Paul Caponigro’s Landscape (1975) is a paean to atmosphere and nuance. The "landscape" it explores is light and the changing seasons. Caponigro’s black-and-white photographs are intimate and subtle. I took Landscape into the darkroom with me as guide and inspiration.

Photograph by Paul Caponigro, Woods, Redding, Connecticut, 1969

Photograph by Paul Caponigro, Winthrop, Massachusetts, 1964

Joel Meyerowitz’s Cape Light (1978) contains exquisitely detailed large-format photographs—daylight and nighttime pictures, interiors and exteriors, portraits and landscapes—all in astonishing color. The scene on the cover appears in the book at least five times, but it looks vastly different in each depiction, due to weather, time of day and keen perception. This book is about the richness and variety of place. It demonstrated to me that by paying close attention (and sticking around for awhile) you can find ample material close to home.

Photograph by Joel Meyerowitz, Hartwig House, Truro, 1976

Photograph by Joel Meyerowitz, Truro, 1976

In February 1984 I traveled to nearby Nyack, New York. I didn’t know anything about Nyack except that it had been my late grandfather’s favorite destination.

The Village of Nyack is located on the Hudson River, which gives the light there its distinctive glow. Walking around with my camera, I thought, I feel like I’m in an Edward Hopper painting.

If you’re schooled in Art History (which I’m not) you may know Nyack is Edward Hopper’s birthplace. When I found this out, everything started adding up. It dawned on me that the light that characterizes and distinguishes a place could be captured to illuminate its portrait.

Painting by Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning, 1930

My trip provided a culminating insight. Light—with it’s ability to reveal form, convey mood and transform appearances—can itself be the catalyst for creating art (an epiphany for me at the time, although hardly groundbreaking in art historical terms). This new understanding was to inform my first serious body of work.

In 1988, I was invited to participate in the Ellis Island Project: Documentation/Interpretation, a photography project focused on the former immigration station in New York Harbor. Naturally, I accepted. Here was the perfect synergy: an incredible subject, buildings steeped in history, beautiful light and a project that encouraged interpretation.

Photograph by David Simonton, Ellis Island, 1989

Photograph by David Simonton, During the Restoration (The Great Hall), Ellis Island, 1988

For nine months, through three seasons, I photographed on Ellis Island. Two years later, in a gallery in Raleigh, North Carolina, one of the photographs from that experience would be the first I would ever exhibit.

Endnotes:

^[1.] The Polaroid Swinger was one of the fastest selling cameras of all time, selling 4 million units in two years. It retailed for $19.95. The original TV commercial (featuring Ali MacGraw) is on YouTube. ^{(Back to Article ↑)}

^[2.] Peter Simon (Carly Simon’s brother) owns and runs a gallery with his wife, Ronni, on Martha’s Vineyard. You can visit his website: petersimon.com ^{(Back to Article ↑)}

Editor’s Note: This piece was written by David Simonton for our Visual Influences Series.
View a selection of Simonton’s photography featured on One, One Thousand in January 2011.
You can also view more of Simonton’s work at his website: davidsimonton.com

"The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, — all in one." — John Ruskin

You can friend One, One Thousand on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to One, One Thousand’s Blog Feed.

                          

I like many of Soth’s images, and his connections to his three predecessors are apparent. But he does far more portraiture than at least Shore or Sternfeld. I love his straightforward style, technical mastery, and keen eye for the quirky or discordant. In this image, though, what stands out is the look of hardened sadness in the subject’s eyes. I find myself feeling what this young man must feel, contemplating other paths he might have taken, and the long years ahead of him in the hellhole of Angola State Prison (I’m from Louisiana, so I know what that means).

William Eggleston. The link (left) is to a 12-year-old Salon article about him, among the better descriptions I’ve read of what his work is about. Linking to specific images at the Eggleston Trust is difficult, but there’s a selection of work there to view from each of his portfolios and monographs. Given that he’s the alpha dog of contemporary color fine-art photography, it’s a short hop from admiration to adulation and cliché. Foremost among those clichés is the hoary summation that Eggleston glorifies the banal and everyday. While that’s likely true, I prefer to think he made it respectable to compose in color, making color an integral part of the composition rather than simply a flashy hide stretched over black-and-white bones. There’s also a lot of darkness in his work; his photographs of people, especially, nearly always contain a sense of foreboding or tension, or an awareness of issues felt, but unseen beyond the edge of the frame.

Stephen Shore, Main Street, Twin Falls, Idaho, July 19, 1973

Uncommon Places was one of the first "serious" photography books I bought; it’s a landmark for me. It’s said of Shore that he, like Eggleston, documented in deadpan fashion the banal and everyday. True. But his technical mastery elevates the work. I love his use of lines (storefronts, streets, power lines) in many of his images to move the viewer’s eye around; with everything overlaid by the rich, lush color and saturated detail only a large-format camera can capture. I revisit Uncommon Places frequently, and find myself slack-jawed before the simple beauty of the work.

Joel Sternfeld, McLean, Virginia, 1978

What caught my eye—before I learned the exculpatory back-story—was the utter incongruity of the scene. But examining the photograph more closely, I was blown away by his brilliant use of color in the composition. Overall, it’s a warm-toned image, as you’d expect to see in autumn in Virginia. Notice the three main areas of orange color: the pumpkins and fragments at foreground; the neatly stacked pumpkins in middle ground; and the orange flames in the background. The eye connects the three areas in a sweep from front to back, almost as if an orange river were flowing toward the viewer. Sternfeld is sometimes compared to Shore—which makes some sense given the superficial similarity of their work, and their 3-year age difference—and his connection to both Shore and Eggleston is apparent. But I find his work more lyrical and complex, and less strictly literal, than that of Shore; and more technically accomplished than Eggleston’s.

Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Michael Sebastian for our Visual Influences Series.
View a selection of Sebastian’s photography featured on One, One Thousand in December 2010.
You can also view more of Sebastian’s work at his website: michaelsebastian.com

"The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, — all in one." — John Ruskin

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This picture single-handedly made me want to become a color photographer.  I can remember the very first time I saw the image in a slide lecture at MICA and I just gasped.  It’s one of those pictures that has an immediate power and presence, it’s like a punch.  I’ve seen a lot of photographers try to make and remake this kind of picture again and again, combining representation and reality into one frame, but I haven’t seen too many that affect me the way this one did, and still does.

Roger Fenton, Valley of the Shadow of Death, 1855

For me, this is easily the sexiest and most violent black and white landscape picture I’ve ever seen.  I’m interested in photographs that describe the aftermath of an event more so than coverage of it, and Fenton, without showing us any bloodshed, is able to encapsulate the desolation and massive scale of war into a single, almost featureless photograph.  I don’t need to see what happened here, I feel like I already know. Errol Morris wrote an incredible series of articles for the New York Times about an alternative version of this photograph, which has only strengthened my admiration for it (and for Morris).

I think about this picture probably more than any other picture I know and it’s one of only a handful that I have hanging in my house.  It’s been a definite influence on me, most directly in my photographs of the paths that link TNT Storage Igloos in Point Pleasant.  I learned from his photograph that you don’t need to overtly show something in a picture for your picture to be about something.  The paths in Point Pleasant are as much about war as a battalion of troops would be for me, it’s all in the intention of the photographer.

Joshua Dudley Greer, Path S7, Point Pleasant, West Virginia, 2010

William Christenberry, Red Building in Forest, Hale Country, Alabama, 1983

I think anytime you can combine humor and melancholy into a single image, you’ve done your job as a photographer.  This picture is seemingly so straightforward and simple, yet it speaks so poignantly about the American experience and I think about photography in general.  At first glance we see a red brick building and we wonder — why would anyone brick in a door? It’s just kind of funny to see.  A door that doesn’t open ceases to be a door, it’s just a representation of a door.  Upon further inspection, we realize that they’re aren’t actually any bricks at all, it’s just paper.  So the door does open, but why would anyone want us to think that the door was bricked in?  Maybe someone doesn’t want us to see what’s inside.  Maybe they had a sense of humor, maybe they didn’t.  In a way the building has a strange parallel with the photograph — there are no bricks in a picture, it’s just a sheet of paper and of course you can’t look inside it, all you have is what you can see from the outside.

Joshua Dudley Greer, Bricks, Athens, Georgia, 2009

Simon Roberts, Maidstone Young Bird Pigeon Race, Maidstone, Kent, 13th September 2008

Simon Roberts’ We English is one of my favorite books of the past few years.  In a way I see a strong connection to what Joel Sternfeld did in the late 70′s/early 80′s with American Prospects.  Both bodies of work have this incredible scale to them, a kind of leverage over their subject matter.  There is a slight detachment, but the photographs are still personal and delicate, richly nuanced and littered with detail.  As a photographer, I don’t exactly understand how Roberts made a lot of these pictures with a large format camera, they’re just too perfect in their complexity — the vantage point, the composition of multiple, uncontrollable elements, the light and weather, and the serendipity of it all.  Almost every picture in the book is a knockout, they just blow me away.

Joel Sternfeld, Approximately 17 of 41 Sperm Whales that Beached and Subsequently Died, Florence, Oregon, June 1979

Joel Sternfeld’s American Prospects is still the pinnacle of American photographic surveys for me.  Incredibly beautiful and deeply troubling, Sternfeld’s work shows me not just the grandeur and despair of the American landscape, but the selectivity and sophistication of an artist in their prime.  Pictures like this don’t come along too often in life, even if you’re out there searching for them everyday.  Taking elements that would usually be the domain of reportage or photojournalism and manipulating them into this epic painting, Sternfeld weaves together just about every desirable element of picture making into a single frame — light, weather, color, scale, composition, timing, circumstance, tragedy and beauty.  And there in the tiniest of gestures, is this man looking back at Sternfeld, possibly making his own picture at the exact same moment.  I’ve always wanted to see what kind of picture he was making.  Maybe One, One Thousand could put together an investigation à la Mikael Blomkvist and track down the man and find his picture€¦ I’m guessing it wasn’t as good as Sternfeld’s.

Editor’s Note: "Visual Influences" is a new series on One, One Thousand wherein the publication’s featured photographers discuss their influences. This piece was written by Joshua Dudley Greer. You can find future "Visual Influences" entries here.

View a selection of Greer’s photography featured on One, One Thousand in January 2011.
You can also view more of Greer’s work at his website: jdudleygreer.com

"The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, — all in one." — John Ruskin

You can friend One, One Thousand on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to One, One Thousand’s Blog Feed.