7/27/2005
Self-Analysis
I've wondered why I gravitated towards photography. A few ideas:
My mother was at one point a concert pianist. She's dead nearly 20 years now. Last night I dreamed that I had written a new tune and was playing it for her on the piano. She ignored it. Much too simple I guess for her taste. But it reminded me of the days when I was a teenager playing rock and roll on the piano.
My mother would be going around the house cleaning things up and every once in a while she'd shout over: Quit banging on the piano! Do you have to bang!
Her father was a musician. He taught me to play the piano. His method involved smacking my hands with a ruler until they were shaped properly to strike the keys.
My father (very much alive) was something of an intellectual. The house was filled with his books and journals. He had definite ideas about writing but never gave much praise for my own attempts. (Later this was to change - but not when I was younger).
So one of the things - early on - I wanted some means of expression that could be free of parental criticism. Something that neither of them knew anything about - that could be mine alone.
Later on - as I waded through the mundane drudgery of work - photography resurfaced again - but with an inverse relationship to how routine the rest of my life was.
Taking a camera to work everyday eased the boredom of the subway ride. Instead of burying my head in a book, or pretending to sleep - I became wide awake and what would otherwise have been a boring trip became exciting. I became more - not less - aware of what was going on around me.
Photography was something you could do to make the ordinary - extra-ordinary.
Other things - technique - enjoying shapes and light for their own sake - this all comes later. The driving force was not "art" - but a safe place to express my own identity by what I put in the frame.
There were other instincts which eventually came into play: the idea of the hunt was as crucial as whether you actually bagged anything. That, I think - must be inborn and go back to our early ancestors who lived or died by the hunt. But as I say - that all emerged later on.
My mother was at one point a concert pianist. She's dead nearly 20 years now. Last night I dreamed that I had written a new tune and was playing it for her on the piano. She ignored it. Much too simple I guess for her taste. But it reminded me of the days when I was a teenager playing rock and roll on the piano.
My mother would be going around the house cleaning things up and every once in a while she'd shout over: Quit banging on the piano! Do you have to bang!
Her father was a musician. He taught me to play the piano. His method involved smacking my hands with a ruler until they were shaped properly to strike the keys.
My father (very much alive) was something of an intellectual. The house was filled with his books and journals. He had definite ideas about writing but never gave much praise for my own attempts. (Later this was to change - but not when I was younger).
So one of the things - early on - I wanted some means of expression that could be free of parental criticism. Something that neither of them knew anything about - that could be mine alone.
Later on - as I waded through the mundane drudgery of work - photography resurfaced again - but with an inverse relationship to how routine the rest of my life was.
Taking a camera to work everyday eased the boredom of the subway ride. Instead of burying my head in a book, or pretending to sleep - I became wide awake and what would otherwise have been a boring trip became exciting. I became more - not less - aware of what was going on around me.
Photography was something you could do to make the ordinary - extra-ordinary.
Other things - technique - enjoying shapes and light for their own sake - this all comes later. The driving force was not "art" - but a safe place to express my own identity by what I put in the frame.
There were other instincts which eventually came into play: the idea of the hunt was as crucial as whether you actually bagged anything. That, I think - must be inborn and go back to our early ancestors who lived or died by the hunt. But as I say - that all emerged later on.
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