Music, Museums, and Monochrome – Avenue Images Journal

“How is he going to become a good photographer when all he cares about is photography?” That query was requested by certainly one of Magnum’s founding members of a younger photographer who aspired to hitch the company.

When I heard Peter Turnley share that quote with a bunch of workshop contributors, I used to be reminded of a bit of recommendation Arthur Meyerson offers his college students. “If you want to improve your photography, take up a second hobby,” he says.

It was, I believe, Henri Cartier-Bresson who mentioned {that a} {photograph} depicts the world with out, whereas additionally revealing the photographer’s internal world. This perception would counsel {that a} manner of making extra participating photographs is to develop extra pursuits. Both the warning towards constricting one’s experiences, and the encouragement to broaden one’s pursuits, knowledgeable my planning for the journey I made to Paris final yr.

From December 26, 2024 by January 8, 2025, I explored and photographed in a lot of central Paris, strolling a mean of ten miles a day. Beyond the images expertise, I made time to attend half a dozen classical music concert events, together with a number of performances of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, and visited as many museums, together with Musée d’ Orsay, Musée Rodin, Musée Mormottan Monet, Musée National Picasso, Petit Palais, Musée de I’Orangerie, and Jue de Paume images and video artwork museum. What higher metropolis than Paris to hunt inspiration from different artists, be they painters, sculptors, photographers, or musicians!

Exposing ourselves to the artistic work of others, whatever the type of artwork, stimulates our personal creativity, maybe subtly, even subconsciously. Leaving Église de Saint-Germain-des-Prés, after having loved a masterful efficiency of The Four Seasons, I used to be, in a phrase, impressed. And I’m by no means extra impressed visually than after spending an hour or two within the Musée d’ Orsay appreciating the work of the impressionists.

Even on the subject of panorama images, I take as a lot inspiration from the Hudson River School painters as I do from the photographs of modern-day photographers. For a examine of sunshine and composition, one can not go mistaken with work of the New England panorama by Thomas Cole.

While social media websites comparable to Instagram are a wellspring of artistic expression, one does should be discerning. Many a picture posted on social media is finest not emulated.

Sometimes, after spending an excessive amount of valuable time scrolling by social media, I really feel convicted by Norwegian author, Knut Hamsun’s query, “What have you done with your eyes?”

The chance that what we select to see and take in will have an effect on our personal imaginative and prescient serves as each a warning, and an inspiration to hunt out that which could be inspiring, uplifting, and enlarging. 

Beyond committing to set my digital camera apart lengthy sufficient to find time for music and museums, I resolved to render in monochrome all the photographs I’d make whereas in Paris. To support in previsualizing these photographs, I set the digital viewfinder on my digital camera to black and white. To make certain, I’ve made many a colour photographs on the road, and can once more. For these 13 days in Paris, although, eliminating colour as a consideration made it potential to convey extra focus to the seek for juxtapositions and moments of engagement value remembering.

Setting out every morning and afternoon from my resort room within the Le Marais district close to Saint-Paul metro station, I used to be aware of Peter Turnley’s recommendation to maintain one’s head up, and to open one’s coronary heart, thoughts, and eyes to the likelihood that no matter unfolds in entrance of you subsequent would possibly very properly be a wonder-filled second.

As I strolled the slender streets of Isle de Saint Louise, by the Latin quarter, down Boulevard Satin-Germain, alongside the Champs-Élysées, alongside Rue de Rivoli, across the Le Marais district, up on Montmartre, on the promenade at Jardins de Trocadéro throughout the Sein from the Eiffel Tower, on the banks of the Sein, or wherever else my intuition led me, I stored reminding myself of how lucky I used to be to be surrounded by numerous fascinating actors, because it have been, filling their position on the dynamic and vibrant stage that’s the metropolis of Paris.

Having misplaced two brothers in as a few years, one having handed away the week earlier than Christmas, 2024, I believe that on this journey I skilled the road lifetime of Paris with heightened senses.  When I take into account that we’re every finite beings, with our personal story, our personal perspective, and our personal hopes and expectations of what would possibly unfold subsequent, and after I can really feel gratitude for every one that comes into my viewfinder, then I discover myself extra keenly conscious that the scene I’m witnessing is transient, and can by no means once more unfold in precisely the identical manner. That consciousness, I hope, results in photographs that specific one thing of the enjoyment I really feel as a bystander with a digital camera in hand.

Eleven years in the past, I started what grew to become a five-year undertaking documenting homelessness in America. That work took me to greater than 70 cities throughout the nation. Most of the photographs I made for the undertaking have been road portraits of individuals experiencing homelessness. It was basically portraiture, and straight documentary images. Out of that work grew my curiosity in photographing the city surroundings.  

Within the bigger style of road images, I’m most drawn to documentary and observational photographs. Documentary road images is, in my understanding, simple reporting of life on the road. Looking for and capturing juxtapositions, or interactions and encounters that could be humorous or dramatic, or each, I take into account to be observational road images. A 3rd method that I often discover is aesthetic road images, as represented by the work of Saul Leiter.

Of the 13 days I photographed in Paris late final December and early January final yr, 5 of them have been spent in a workshop led by Peter Turnley. On the ultimate afternoon, whereas Peter was in his residence weaving participant photographs right into a presentation, I headed to Isle Saint-Louise. Standing on Point Saint-Louis bridge, I assumed I noticed Peter. Walking over to him, I quickly realized that it was probably his twin brother, David Turnley, who’s himself an achieved photojournalist and road photographer, and a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. David and Peter each settled in Paris some 50 years in the past.

David kindly invited me into the Le Flore en I’Ile for espresso and a dialog. Speaking with David left me much more satisfied that no matter model of road images one would possibly pursue, possessing a full measure of fascination with folks and with city life is as essential to a road photographer as having a digital camera in hand.

Moving from Florida to Santa Fe, New Mexico eleven years in the past, I used to be drawn into panorama images in a manner I had by no means pursued it earlier than. The northern New Mexico panorama actually is a land of enchantment. Several years in the past, my spouse and I started exploring wildlife images, first in Alaska, then in Antarctica, Africa, Svalbard, and again to Alaska this yr. (I’m grateful that I get pleasure from a minimum of just a few genres of images, first as a result of the variability retains me and impressed, and second as a result of working towards panorama, wildlife, and road images makes it potential to justify proudly owning numerous digital camera gear.)

As a lot as I get pleasure from panorama and wildlife images, witnessing and photographing human exercise and interactions is the style of images that I discover most difficult and rewarding.  Walking the streets of Paris looking out for participating moments, I’m in what could be described as a zone of consciousness. It is a state of such full consideration, that, in my expertise, road images can rival even formation skydiving as a manner of bringing one’s consideration totally into the current second. The photographs submitted with this text symbolize moments of life, generally humorous, generally dramatic, as they unfolded in public, in clear view of and accessible to anybody standing by with curiosity and a digital camera. Sure, images is in regards to the high quality of sunshine, however additionally it is in regards to the depth and the breadth of 1’s pursuits.