Just some thoughts
January 25th, 2008
“Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.”
–Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Good advice. I don’t know about the sensible words…that’s not so easy…but I try to do this whenever possible. My easy way is to read Garrison Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac” every morning. This morning I found some things there that I think apply to photography and that may be worth sharing. You’ll have to decide if I’m right or not.
It’s the birthday of William Somerset Maugham. He wrote, “Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.”
I try to capture something of that “smell” in my photographs.
And, it’s the birthday of the novelist and essayist Virginia Woolf. In her long essay about women and literature, “A Room of One’s Own” (1929), she wrote: “So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity, which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.”
She was, of course, talking about writing. But I think what she said applies equally to any artist in any medium. Even photography.
Leave a Reply