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.