For me, taking a photograph means making a selection from everything that surrounds us, pointing at it and saying: "Look at that!" It’s an attempt to simplify the visual clutter of the world and show something that is interesting or beautiful - something that we might walk by without noticing, something that we only notice when we slow down and pay attention.
The world around us is in a continuous state of movement and we ourselves are part of that moving world. We tend to pay attention to 'sights', spectacle, things we are told are important. We are surrounded by television screens that show us a heightened, exaggerated version of the world, where boredom has been banished and only the spectacular is deemed to be worthwhile. All this makes it hard to appreciate the world that we actually live in. All we need to do is slow down, to look at things as if for the first time.
I find that the 'ordinary', everyday world is intriguing enough on its own. I don’t need to make it more mysterious by the way I photograph it: I mostly take pictures in daylight, preferably in sunlight.
I hardly ever photograph people, but almost all my photographs show the signs of human activity, the changes that humans insist on making to their world. Even if they’re not actually in the picture, the real subjectmatter of the photographs is people and the things they make and do.
"Most photographs would never be taken except for an impulsive enjoyment, a delight that is notably free from big ideas."
- Robert Adams
"Life, as it unfolds in front of the camera, is full of so much complexity, wonder, and surprise that I find it unnecessary to create new realities. There is more pleasure, for me, in things as-they-are."
- David Hurn
“I have come to believe in the superiority of discovery over invention. What is important is not what I make happen, but what happens to me.”
- Burt Glinn
“No place is boring, if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film.”
- Robert Adams