Travel & Humanitarian Photos
I’m really chuffed about this. I’ve swapped blogs with David duChemin and we’ve each written an article entitled “Standing on the shoulders of giants” where we discuss other photographers who have inspired us.
You can read my article on David’s excellent pixelatedimage blog and if you’re not already a regular reader then I recommend that you subscribe to his RSS feed or bookmark the blog home page whilst you’re there.
David’s a Humanitarian Photographer and boasts a rare talent. Take a look at his portfolio and especially his work for World Vision to see what I mean. He also runs photo tours to Kashmir with Matt Brandon and I see from the Lumen Dei web site that there’s only one place remaining on this year’s expedition so if you fancy it, and why on earth wouldn’t you, I’d book your place pretty smartish. You’ll regret it if you don’t.
As if all that weren’t enough to make him a very welcome guest writer, David’s also a thoroughly decent bloke. Yes, I know, makes you sick doesn’t it.
I’m delighted to introduce you to David and know that you’ll get along famously.
Sir Isaac Newton once wrote. “if I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of giants.” For photographers this means the influence of other photographers – artists who’ve created images that so strongly resonate with us that they’ve determined not only our career paths but also what we shoot and how.
For me these giants have been Steve McCurry, Yousuf Karsh and Freeman Patterson – three men who couldn’t be more divergent in their styles if they tried. But as a teenager I poured over their books, their photographs. I soaked up their images, and where I could find them, their words.
Steve McCurry needs no introduction to most of us. I’d wager a great many of the photographers reading this were also influenced in some way by him. His stark portrait of the afghan refugee girl was pinned to my wall for years, staring holes in me. It was her unguardedness, the revelation of her soul through her eyes that drew me, made me want to photograph in a way that was compelling, revealing. His focus on texture and soft light were also influences on me, and I think it shows. The passion it stirred in me for the homeless and the excluded remains undiluted to this day.
Yousef Karsh was a master portraitist, in residence at the Chateaux Laurier in Ottawa where I was a teenager, for years. His work was formal, black and white, but it shared with McCurry a focus on photographs that revealed the character of the subject and exquisite texture. Monochrome images have a way of focussing us on fewer elements, they allow texture, light, gesture to play more powerfully for the absence of colour. I often wonder why I stopped shooting black and white, but I’ve never tired of photographing people.
Freeman Patterson drew me too. I’m not sure you’d ever know it to look at my portfolio. I rarely shoot the natural world anymore. Probably too many hours sitting in swamps with big lenses photographing mallards. What Patterson gave me was an eye for detail, a love for bringing the chaos into order through the discipline of the frame. He gave me my love for colour, natural light, and the play of lines.
Other influences, probably equally important, continue to make me the photographer I am. Tom Stoddart, Ami Vitale, Olivier Follmi, among them. I’m standing on the shoulders of a great many giants. But at a certain point, if one is to be a giant oneself we need to get off these shoulders and forge a direction of our own. This isn’t at all to imply we become “better than” just “other than.” We develop our own voice about the things that we are passionate about. Giants can take us a long way there, and I’m not sure there is ever a point in our growth as artists that there are no longer giants on whose shoulders we stand. But if we’re really lucky, all this standing and learning to see from such heights makes us tall enough that others coming after us will gain their footing on our shoulders, and give us a chance to give back to the craft that’s given us so much.
Find some giants and don’t be afraid to enjoy the view, soak it up as long as you can balance there, but eventually you need to climb down and take your place among them.
David duChemin
May 2008
[...] seems like ages ago that Gavin Gough and I traded blogs for a day. He wrote here, I wrote over at his place and we shared a theme; the notion of standing on the shoulders of giants. This isn’t about [...]
Gavin, thanks for swapping blogs with David. I was just over there reading your article and now I’m here reading David’s. This post was written about a year ago and it is amazing how prophetic it was. In case you don’t know it already, you and David are both Giants.
S.