Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/04/10
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I'm the 'Eye in the Sky', I couldn't leave you completely... I don't think 'learning to "do" business is the hardest photographic skill there is', but never mind. I must be born in another world.=20 More interesting is the position of W. Eugene Smith who used to tell how he every day learned new things about photography. (I j=F6sse namn, Claes Bjerner, nu kommer jag att f=E5 p=E5 p=E4lsen ig=E4n!)=20 I was a communist at the age of fifteen. I learned drawing in a school some years later, and I studied Social Anthropology. But I learned more about photography working as a carpenter, as a sailor, as a cook on an oil rig, as a fisherman in Greenland, as a school teacher, as an Army officer and UN observer, as a NGO volunteer in Africa. I also learned a lot in the Louvre and in the Prado, staring at paintings for hours. =20 Watching television is not very good for photographers, I think, and I try to avoid it. But tonight I saw a Japanese (NHK) reportage about the images made by the photographer Yosuke Yamahata in Nagasaki, August 10 1945...just 115 photos. I learned a lot of this as well. I am a 'concerned photographer', I am not a good businessman. I still learn something every day. I think it is important to find your personal way, your own version. This takes time, perhaps a lifetime. Life is a complex story and it is difficult to know exactly why and how it becomes your life. There are no rules. Oddmund