I’m often asked by my students, photographers, clients etc which other photographers have influenced me. I tend to answer by saying that I’m not influenced by the person who made the image, but I am influenced by the image. The picture is the thing. But this is too simple an answer.
Often you will hear photographers quote Henri Cartier-Bresson. A major figure no doubt, but his thoughts on the decisive moment was his real legacy. His preoccupation with the geometric balance within the composition of an image, for him was of utmost importance. For me he was not, as is often wrongly stated a pre-eminent photographic reporter, but he was a maker of individual visual statements. I suppose I would prefer the work of figures such as Lewis Hine and Brassai who’s images have more resonance. and had far more importance as social commentators.
A few years ago whilst visiting the Museum of Modern Art in San-Francisco I chanced upon the work of the artist Sol LeWitt (recently passed away). I was there to look at an exhibition of work by the Magnum group of photographers. I found this photo exhibition dull (same old, same old). I’m tired of this form of applied photography, unimaginative, uninspiring. Anyway, my visit to the museum was not wasted as I stumbled into the LeWitt exhibition.
As a lecturer, I’d heard of Sol LeWitt, but to see his work in the flesh, left me electrified. LeWitt was a conceptual artist who used a range of mediums and forms, including photography. But it was his minimalist wall pieces,simple lines, colours and patterns that caught my imagination. They were on on a grand, no, huge scale. Perhaps seeing his work allowed me to have more faith in my own simplicity of line. and image construction.
I admire the carefully constructed photography of Ralph Gibson and the prolific output of William Eggleston, a much more important figure than Cartier-Bresson. His democratic subject selection has freed my own eye. The quiet, almost Zen like still-life work of Jan Groover, John Blakemore and Josef Sudek.
As a photographer of people mostly, although I can and do work across many disciplines. I see in the portraiture of Marion Ettlinger and Jane Bown that simplicity of line as seen in Lewitt’s work, that quiet, contemplative nature of Sudek’s. As I grow older, I see my work mature and become a mix of what I see, hear and experience.
