Spiritual Photographers?

Minor White, Twisted Cypress and Sea, 1950

 What is it that earns someone this sobriquet?  A Google search on "mystical photographers" yields a range of not easily classifiable images.  Some are misty or cloudy landscapes, others might have a nature theme, or perhaps include religious symbols. It appears that the photographer's process might have as much to do with the label as the images themselves.

Minor White, often considered a spiritual photographer, takes a contemplative approach to his work. Here are a couple of quotes about being present and about seeing:

"No matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer it has chosen."
AND
"No matter what role we are in--photographer, beholder, critic--inducing silence for seeing in ourselves, we are given to see from a sacred place. From that place the sacredness of everything may be seen."*

Minor White taught others, who, like him, are sometimes considered "mystical," or "spiritual" photographers, among them Paul Caponigro (John Paul's father).

*Source: Aperture Monograph (1978). Minor White: Rites & Passages. New York: Aperture.

Be Still

Be still with yourself
Until the object of your attention
Affirms your presence
             --Minor White

Minor White, Happy Farmyard, Grand, 1941 [MOMA]

Included in an Aperture monograph on Minor White is a list of selected books from his personal library. It reveals an interest in depth psychology, meditation, especially Zen meditation, astrology, Gurdjieff, the Tao, and other aspects of Eastern thought. 
I am trying to decide whether this orientation is necessarily revealed in his photographs.  Certainly they have presence.  But the images of many other photographers do also.  Did his meditative orientation inform him and support his personal experience in making photographs more than it did his images?



[Minor White: Rites & Passages. Aperture Monograph, 1978.]

Well-crafted Nothings?

Takeshi Shikama

I am listening to John Paul Caponigro talk about his process and he just asked: "What do you bring to a photograph? Are you really there, really present? Or are we all producing well-crafted nothings?" He suggests paying close attention to your own  process. "Images are records of ways of looking." And looking is part of the process. He mentions that he keeps a file of the artists who have inspired and influenced him and how he looks for them to emerge in his own work, which might take decades.

My intention in this blog is to document my own process while working on a class assignment at UKY: to produce a small body of work that emulates a "famous" photographer. The idea is to take the spirit of the work and find one's own expression of that--to emulate not to copy or imitate.

The first photographers I thought of were Michael Kenna and related to him, Minor White and White's student Paul Caponigro.  Then I found Takeshi Shikama. Stacey (UKY instructor) suggests perhaps doing something with these photographers as inspiration and creating a concept project rather than a straight emulation. So, in my process I will need to spend more time looking at their photographs and see what resonates.