On Reading -- Stealing from the best.

Nearly all of my photographs organize themselves into loosely-defined, open-ended projects that are never finished but often stop at an interesting place for a portfolio, show, or hand-made book. 

People often ask; “Where do you get ideas for your projects?”  British photographer and educator, David Hurn says; “Our advice to photographers is best expressed by Calvin Trilling: ‘The immature artist borrows; the mature artist steals.’  So steal from the best.”

I’m certainly stealing from the best for this one.  In the 1970s the great Andre Kertesz published a charming book titled “On Reading”.  Quite a few years later I stumbled upon it in the public library and not too long after that my wonderful wife (at the time a used book dealer) found me a copy of my own.  It has since been reprinted in paper cover but my vintage hardback is way cooler.

The Seattle area (where we live) is more than a bit bookish so it isn’t at all hard to find raw material for my own “On Reading” project.  In fact, I sorted through my negatives and found quite a few already there and I’ve added to the project from time to time ever since.  People who are reading are easy marks — lost in their book the rest of the world kind of fades away.  Here’s one from Honolulu:

I put this photograph up on my website and some months later received an email from an author/educator who was writing a textbook for aspiring primary grade teachers.  She wanted to use it as the cover photograph on her book.  Here’s the good part: She teaches at the University of Silesia in Poland!  Isn’t the internet wonderful sometimes?

Closer to home is this vendor at a farmers’ market in Portland, Oregon.  She was definitely paying more attention to the latest Barbara Kingsolver novel than to her baked goods.  Books are a good conversation starter — we talked current novels for a few minutes before she sold me a chocolate croissant and went back to reading.

And the most recent.  If I just go out to take photographs I usually come back empty handed.  If I go out to photograph with the agenda of working on a given project I will usually come back with something I like but not necessarily what I expected.  I suspect that this has to do with looking for something instead of just looking.  This day I started out looking for photographs of street musicians and came back with this.