artist inspiration

Sally Mann

Maybe my favorite photographer.

She uses glass plate negatives with a view camera. I've used the large format view camera, but never glass plates. It's a personal goal to use them.

This short video will give you an idea of how the process works if you've never seen it before.

She is most famous for her stunning photographs of her children when they are young.

But in recent years did a series about her husband and his battle with muscular dystrophy. These are also some of my favorite images. I like when artists aren't afraid to be personal because that makes their work so much stronger and unforgettable. It touches a part of you then. 

thanks for stopping by.

artist inspiration

Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Here's an excerpt from the catalog of the Art Institute of Chicago when they had a show of his work there last year. You can read more of it here.

"Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925–1972) has been on the fringes of photographic history—so much so that he inserted one of his own prints into his personal copy of Beaumont Newhall’s classic History of Photography, which did not include him. And yet his impact on photographic practice, belatedly recognized, has been significant. An optician in Lexington, Kentucky, Meatyard sustained a life-long interest in visual perception. Well read and deeply connected to a circle of poets and philosophers, he made photographs rich in literary allusion. Meatyard’s photography was not accidental or documentary, but rather deliberate, often staged, and searching for inner truths rather than ephemeral surfaces."

I hope you enjoy his work as much as I do. It's hauntingly fresh and direct even years later.