Think, Look, Make

Kizomba at the Viaduc Paris, 2015 Every encounter with a person or a place has the potential to change us. The person who changed my way of seeing, as a photographer, was Robert Clarke-Davis. I was lucky to have spent moments wandering with him in Chicago and San Francisco, watching him take photos. And, he sent me camera equipment and photographs of his to look at, nearly every week, for years. My eyes perceive the world differently because of him.  Joel Meyerowitz quit his job and decided to become a photographer on the day he met Robert Frank, even though they barely exchanged words. I enjoyed watching this video, in which Joel describes watching Robert take photographs of two children and the effect that hearing Frank press the shutter had on him.  Little snippets: “The small gestures seemed to have meaning, or potential for meaning. I felt the rhythmic flow. They were visual revelations. When I left the location, suddenly, everything on the street seemed dynam...

"Art does heal: scientists say appreciating creative works can fight off disease." is the headline of a Feb 2015 article in The Telegraph. It says that experiencing art is associated with the following positive emotions: "amusement, awe, compassion, contentment, joy, love and pride." I know this is one of the reasons I love getting a text like this from a former student. Even better is seeing students post pictures of themselves with art, like the one below. All photos were taken in Paris, except the Barnett Newman, taken in NY. Musee Picasso- I loved their outfits, her tattoos, that she is taller than him and how she was so affectionate. Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson. Hardly anyone goes here. Again, I was drawn to her tattoo, the way she held herself the whole time she was looking at the art, and she looked very, very slowly. Centre Pompidou- Yves Klein. This jovial woman from Spain didn't realize that there was anything in common betwe...

Paris, 2015 When people are asked which historical figures they would like to meet, answers like Jesus and Mother Theresa come up. For me, it is Man Ray. I made a pilgrimage to photograph his grave at the Cimetiere de Montparnasse this summer, and read his epitaph: "Unconcerned but not indifferent." He is buried with Juliet Browner, whom he met in Los Angeles when he was 50 and she was 29. Of Romanian descent, she was strikingly beautiful in an unconventional way and besides posing for many photographs she would just hang around so that Man Ray could be inspired by her "presence."  Juliet Browner, by Man Ray But, I’ve always been more interested in one of his previous lovers, Lee Miller. At the age of 22, she traveled from the US to learn photography from Man Ray in Paris. Man was nearly 40 and already had a formidable reputation as a Surrealist, painter and photographer. When she landed on his doorstep, he initially refused her but she left with him ...