Epiphany

[Jack_5762]

I had a moment of epiphany in 1968 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I found myself wandering the city streets looking for street photo ops. I wanted to be Cartier-Bresson. The decisive moment was out there somewhere and it had my name on it. If you werent a "street photographer" well what else was there? I should have been in an economics or biology class but would Cartier-Bresson worry about guns and butter or dissecting a fetal pig? The museum had a photo exhibition and all of a sudden I was looking at a large print of Hernandez NM. I was a bit dumb struck. Here was a REAL photograph. Today in my mind I remember the print was 2x3 ft. It was probably a 16x20. While looking at that image I swear I could feel the wind blowing off the mountains. I could smell the food cooking in the houses. I could hear dogs barking and babies crying. None of my photographs could do that. Not even close. I looked at my old double stroke Leica M3 and blamed the camera. That was my epiphany. At that moment I realized that my life's work would be photography. As Joseph Campbell would say "follow your bliss". Well I did only because that one photograph evoked such a response in me. If most of you have set apart a good portion of your life to make photographs has there been a moment of photographic enlightenment for you? Most people I talk to about this say that their experience is similar. It is immediate and not gradual. Interestinly enough in the same exhibition there were a number of Jerry Uelsmann prints. So not only did I realize what my lifes work would be but I found out that flying hamburgers were also OK.

[Mark_3899]

I think it was 1980. I was just a 17 year old kid working summers for my uncle, a studio still life photographer in NYC. Up until this time I was mostly cleaning up, taking film to the lab and developing 8x10 B&W film in tanks. I remember one day he needed prints made for a job and he needed to be doing something else. He asked me to make the prints, and I was excited about it. I had been printing since I was 13, and had thought I was a good printer. Needless to say after spending an hour in the darkroom, he came in took a look at my prints and shook his head. I felt smaller than nothing at this point. He came back a few minutes later, dropped a book on the counter, opened the book to a specific page and said " use all the paper you want, don't come out until your prints look like this". The page was a photograph of some african mud men, the book was Worlds in a Small Room by Irving Penn. Four hours and 120 sheets of paper later I realized I did it. Not that I was able to get the few prints he needed, but that I knew what to look for when printing a negative. That was my epiphany.

[Struan Gray]

A dew-soaked Himalayan Blue Poppy in National Geographic Magazine.

[Ben Calwell]

My moment came when, at around age 12 or 13, I spotted a young, darkly handsome photographer with a large wooden view camera (looking back it must have been a Dorf) setting up a shot at a local state park. His convertible was parked nearby, and it wasn't long before he attracted a very nice looking young blonde. She inquired about what he was doing, and I heard him say "This is how I make my living." The photographer and the blonde then left together in his convertible. I thought, "Man, I want to be a cool-looking dude with a big camera and get a blonde, too." Forty years later, I've got the big camera, but no blonde (but a wonderful wife).

[Mike Butler]

Nowadays, that blonde would probably run away in horror from a large format photographer who had set up in a park, straight into the arms of a guy with a Canon 1DS Mark II, and they'd drive off into the sunset in his Honda Element listening to tunes or looking at pictures on his I Pod Photo.

But blondes and the new generation are entitled to their epiphinies, too.

[darter]

For me, it was as a kid looking through a large-format Smithsonian issued book called, "American Album;" A history of the U.S. as told through historic photographs. The black and white photographs had such depth and and detail that it was like entering through the looking glass to lost worlds. The chuff of steam leaving the locomotive cylinder, the sound of conversation on somebody's proud victorian front porch, the street kids yelling in New York's old bowery seemed almost present, the hand reaching for the beer... just a shutter's click away from the present. I've spent half a lifetime working to construct my own album.

[Tadge Dryja]

For me it was hanging out in the college library one day with nothing to do. I was already kindof into photography, and had fun with my Canon A-1, but had completely dismissed anything other than 35mm as not worth a moments consideration.

I already knew about Adams, and Atget, but then there was a big book by "Avedon". Who's that guy? American West? I like America, and the west, sounds cool.

I started to flip through the pages, then slowed way, way down. "Whoa........ whoooaaa..." just staring at these images, even though they weren't real prints, they were in a book. But still. I'd never really seen anything like it. I mean, these we're 'regular people' ostensibly. But there was nothing regular about any of it.

After that, well... I still don't have an 8x10 yet (only 4x5), but someday, someday. And then all I need is 10,000 sheets of Tri-X and an army of assistants. Then, well... that'll be a start, anyway.

[Bill_1856]

MY EPIPHANY -- I've been photographing for 54 years, and still waiting for it.

[John_4185]

Mine was years into a thriving career escalating from news photographer, to metro daily photographer, to magazine and freelance work and despite success I found myself drifting closer to a black hole of despair. During a lecture a renouned historian, philosopher of art, issued ideas that brought me back to the days of studying in England, serving the life of the mind. A few months later I closed shop and moved to a two-room cabin in a remote winter-climate state, liberated. I became a steel-worker, did construction work, and eventually found myself serving academe. That was about thirty years ago. I have never regretted leaving the photography career.

[j.e.simmons]

Mine was August, 1968. I was playing in a rock 'n roll band in Savannah, Georgia. It was a Sunday afternoon - the band members and some of the patrons of the club where we played were cooking out (barbequeing to you non-Southerners) and sitting around the apartment drinking beer. I pulled out my Polaroid Swinger - the white one that took roll film. I swung around to take a photo of our organ player drinking a beer. He was about three feet away, and I was using flash. Somehow I realized that at that close a distance, the flash would wash out the photo, so I cranked the little exposure control knob down - it was not marked with f/stops. The photo was excellent.

At that moment, I understood that photography was a medium that could be controlled in the same manner as my painting and my music. I was off in a new direction of artistic expression.

[ernie]

"...Four hours and 120 sheets of paper later..."

Hmm... 120 sheets at 2 minutes each in Dektol = 4 hours. That's fast work!

The point, however, is well made:)

[Steve J Murray]

I started taking snapshots with a Brownie box camera when I was about 9 years old. It wasn't until I was a teenager when I got the opportunity to print my negatives in a darkroom. My dad was in advertising and one of the photographers he knew let me use his darkroom after hours. I took an experimental negative I had taken with the family kodak 35mm camera of the swimming raft in the moonlight. I had steadied the camera on the dock and counted a few seconds off hoping to capture enough light to get a good photo. The photo finishing lab did not print those negs probably because they were too thin. I took one of these negs and used polycontrast filter to increase the contrast and made a really nice print of a raft on the water in the moonlight. It was then I realized the creative potential of what you could do with the right materials in the darkroom. Couple years later got a Nikon F, couple years after that a Calumet 4x5.

[Mark Sawyer]

I had my epiphany aound age 20 as a freshman in college, when I was trying my hardest to be a "serious" b/w photographer. I poured my life savings (about $300) into a used Nikon F, because the photo professor explained, "if you want to get 4x5 quality out of a 35mm, get a Nikon."

I worked with it for about a year and enjoyed the camera, but it never really gave me the quality I'd seen in prints from bigger negatives. I sold the Nikon and added another $100 or so, and got a Leica because most people in the photo department agreed that if you *really* want to get 4x5 quality out of a 35mm camera, get a Leica.

The Leica never really did much for me, probably just a personality conflict, and the negatives didn't seem noticeably different than the one's from the Nikon. A few months later, I traded it (with another couple hundred dollars) in on an Alpa, because by then, I'd learned the inside secret that if you REALLY want 4x5 quality out of a 35mm, get an Alpa.

After a few months with the Alpa, it was pretty obvious that the negatives were pretty much on par with the ones from the Nikon and Leica, and the guys at the local camera store were oohing and ahhing over a brand new generation of 35mm Contax, which would give you negatives that REALLY, REALLY gave you 4x5 quality. I think it was about $2700.

About that time, I noticed an old home-made 4x5 in the back of the store with a $20 price tag, and had an epiphany...

[John Layton]

It was July of 1979 - I'd spent about ten days on Deer Isle, Maine - having gotten permission from a lobsterman and offshore fisherman to accompany these folks and their crews to photograph them working. For my accomodations, I was allowed to pitch my tent along the shoreline owned by the Haystack Crafts School - and was basically left alone there. I decided to stay for a few days after my fishing series assignment ended, spending this extra time alone on that rocky stretch, with just a Rolleiflex and small tripod. I've never completely returned from those few days.

[martin_4668]

well i had one just10 days ago. i have been shooting canon A-1, EOS, Leica M, R, screw mount, Nikon, Hasselblad, Rollei, Contax 645, Alpa 12 and linhof 4x5 the last 15 years......(i have a thing with techniques....cant live without the latest)
10 days ago my 5 year old daughter was going on a 2 week trip with her mother. I thought I´d have some fun, and borrowed a Toyo G 8x10 and a Polaroid preocessor from a friend....when the first print on 809 came out....that was it..!!! I just ordered a Canham JMC810 at midwest today.....

[Mark_3632]

As a teacher and obsessed LF photog I have two epiphanies both connected.

Teaching-I was a long term substitute teacher on the south rim of the grand canyon for two months, sept 1-oct 31. That was a bunch of tough kids. One eighth grader, who had just returned from a long suspension and was barred from one of the classes for calling his teacher a whore, was sitting in the hall, since I was on planning I decided to help him out. When the period ended he decided that, instead of sitting in the hall he would come to my classroom for that period to learn his math. One day he looked at me and told me that everything about his life and school sucked except the time he spent with me when he felt important and smart.

Photography-the same two month period was spent without a camera. Yep living on the rim with no camera during the most beautiful light of the year. One day I was watching the sun set in betwen storms when a rainbow appeared to my right that almost made a complete circle, not just an arch and the light to my left lit up like like a fire storm as the sun rays hit a sheet of rain. Got my first camera after that, and have enjoyed the slippery slope of bigger negs and trannies ever since.

[David R Munson]

I've had a number of them and I expect that I will continue to so long as I have the capacity to take in art. A lot of my epiphanies consist of looking at someone's work and having that work cause me to completely reevaluate what I consider a particular medium to be.



For example, this happened a dozen times or so at the library at Ohio University. The most notable were when looking at books by Jock Sturges, Daido Moriyama, and Nobuyoshi Araki. Very different artists, yes, but I love them all and in their own ways they made me reevaluate photography.



Other experiences like these include looking at Lee Bontecou's sculptures, etc at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, watching varoius films involving camerawork by Christopher Doyle, and listening to music by people like Rob Dougan, Björk, and Sigur Rós.



I appreciate all of my many, varied minor epiphanies. They add up to some pretty big personal evolution.

[John_4185]

If I told anyone around here I had an Epiphany, they'd probably rush me to the emergency room. Or maybe a Lutheran minister.

[Bosaiya]

I have had so many over the years, eventually the sheer weight of them broke me.

When I was very young my father used to develop his own B&W in some dark closet in some house someplace we lived in. I remember going in there and seeing the lights and smelling the chemicals and thinking it was such a strange and fascinating world that I hd to be a part of it.

When I was entering my teens a friend's father had a small darkroom in his basement. My friend took me in there and showed me a stack of nudie magazines. Zowie! Then he showed me some photos his dad had developed of nekkid women. I looked at both stacks for some time, trying to understand the difference between porn and fine art nudes. Very careful and lengthy examination was involved as you might understand. I didn't quite have the vocabulary to express the difference, but I knew that I needed to be part of that world.

In my twenties I needed a book on lighting to help me with a non-photographic project. I went down to the local bookstore to see what they had. The entire photo section fit on one small rack. There were four or five of the usual mainstream junk titles you would find, plus one book on lighting for glamour nudes. Well if I was going to look at pictures of lighting... I studied that book, too, and began to understand the theories involved. I also understood that I somehow should have been part of that world (I was far too old by then, of course, to learn photography).

Many years and similar epiphanies later I finally got my act together and found my stride. I was frantically photographing, really just flailing about with a camera, trying everything I could from still lifes to portraits to landscapes to street shots, just not finding anything that felt 'Me'. One day I took a photo of a pile of dead bugs on a paint can and that was it.

Dead bugs may not be on the same level for most people as naked women, and people (especially model friends) think it odd of me when I decline to photograph them because I've got this great new bug I'm trying to capture, but hey, it works for me! Now I get hassled by friends and family to take photos of anything else and it's only under the most grudging of circumstances that I do so. I guess the final epiphny (so far) for me is that I can find something that I want to specialize in and find the beauty in, and if other people don't like it or understand or whatever it makes no difference to me t all. I finally understand those nut-jobs I used to make fun of who labored and toiled on their "art" while the rest of the world went about its business. It was kind of a sobering realization.

[Mark Sawyer]

"I appreciate all of my many, varied minor epiphanies. They add up to some pretty big personal evolution."

I agree with David. Through all the little and sometimes big steps, our work and thought evolves to what it is, and hopefully keeps evolving. Sometimes, though, I kid myself and pretend my progress is by intelligent design...

[Andy Liakos]

Well, I started with an Argus 40 when I was 8 (it still works, and just ran 2 rolls of film through it last week!), then started shooting real estate photography when I was 16 in 1981, and did that until 1996. By that time I really started to need to make actual money, so my wife and I started selling real estate and opened our own brokerage.
Recently we have gotten back into photography, and have accumulated several EOS's, including one for infrared (a 650).
Three weeks ago I bought a used Linhof Technika IV for $750, and made my first image with a 4 x 5 ever. Then I developed the film and printed it with a $50 4 x 5 enlarger on Forte Warmtone.

That was my epiphany. Needless to say, my shopping list for equipment just expanded dramatically. This is why I am here, and I have been enjoying the forum and the stories immensely.

The temptation is to quit working, sell my house, buy a motorhome and head west with my Linhof, my wife, and my dogs (and I guess the kids too).

Well, after I buy a few more lenses and find a solid substitute for Technical Pan.

[Oren Grad]

My interests and pursuits evolve, but there are never any special moments that suddenly change everything. I guess that puts me in agreement with David - it's a stream of epiphanilets, at best.

(Well, partly in agreement, anyway. Afraid neither Sturges, Moriyama nor Araki is epiphanigenic for me.)

[Scott Knowles]

My was two epiphanies and a missed opportunity. I started photography in 1969 and saw the Ansel Adams print, "View of the Sierras at sunrise from Lone Pine". I managed years later to acquire a large poster print (couldn't afford a real print). I am always amazed at the image, the moment it captures.



The missed opportunity was a Saturday morning when we (being in the Air Force in Sacramento) heard Ansel was conducting one of his impromptu weekend workshops in Yosemite. I had no transportation to get to there but a friend of mine did, and let me know I missed one of those lifetime opportunities, to work one of one with Ansel in the field. He said there was less than a dozen on Saturday and a few more on Sunday. I still have regret for not trying harder to be there.



My second epiphany came after years of 35mm photography when I was hiking in Mt Rainier NP in the late 1990's and came upon a view that I knew only 4x5 would do justice with the image, everything else was just inadequate. I did manage to get a good image, but it started me thinking about moving to 4x5, and now years later nearing retirement I'm making the investment to start learning and working in 4x5 this fall. I return to that place now and then to remind me why I photograph.



Thanks for the questions.

[paulr]

Lots of epiphanies, but the most significant might fit better under the category of "ass kickings."

I was a student, had just discovered 4x5 (the college had these calumet studio cameras available for checkout--you had to carry them around in their huge, rectangular hard cases that looked like they might be shipping crates for a rottweiler). I was doing all the usual things done by a kid who's just discovered big negatives: weathered old barns, big vistas, stuff that looked vaguely like what I'd seen in the photo history books. I always showed the results to my friend who was the school darkroom technician, and an excellent landscape photographer. He usually stayed out of the creative process and limited his advice to the details: "less contrast, burn the edges, stop dripping fixer on my office floor."

One day I showed him some picture that was like all the others, and I guess he'd had a long day, or something, and he just snapped. He said something like, "look. you can get as good as you want with the camera and the printing, but unless you can get across some idea of why any of this stuff means anything to you, then all you're doing is a bunch of empty, pointless bullshit." I was completely stunned. It was like a zen slap, and it was immediately obvious that he was right. Burried under all these empty, pointless prints, somewhere, there was a reason that I was doing all this. But I'd never bothered to get in touch with it and nurture it. And this showed, plainly, in my work. This led to a long thumb-sucking session during which i reconsidered everything. From that point on, slowly, I started working towards something that mattered.

[chukmor]

I've been photographing since I was in second grade; I'm 53 now. There are epiphanies all over the place, as others here report. In the mid-80s, I had an epiphany when I walked up to an Edward Hopper painting in a museum. ("So THAT is where my pictures come from!!") I had one a few years ago when I saw Andreas Gursky's large prints. ("Oh. Photoshop. I get it. Hmm. Ahh. Aha. AHA! Let me at it!!!") Last Spring I had an epiphany when I sat through a sunset in one of James Turrell's light spaces. A few months earlier, preparing a graduate school report on the Eameses (Charles and Ray) I suddenly understood what my photo-journalism teacher had been telling me in the '70s. And then there was the time I saw W. Eugene Smith's contact sheets from Spain.... Gee, how can anybody even think of doing anything else for a life, y'know?

[Mark Sawyer]

"There are epiphanies all over the place, as others here report."

Yes, and I've had quite a few. The one Paul mentioned is perhaps the most important- so important for me that I have it over and over and over. Someday maybe it will stick...

[Percy]

Hi.

Ok...a little late...but...

Herman Leonard's photograph of Dexter Gordon (album cover) holding a cigarette with smoke
curling sinuously above is single-handedly responsible for my hopless addiction to black and white photography.
Resistance is futile.