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I know these clips are ancient in Blog Years, but if you have not seen them, it is worth your time. And if you have watched them, do it again and really listen to what they have to say.

Winogrand in particular- man, the guy is just so right.

Garry Winogrand

Jeff Mermelstein

Bruce Gilden

From the Summer, 1995 issue of Deja-Vu, a Japanese Photography Quarterly:

deja-vu: “The Japanese writing system cannot be separated from reality, as the shapes or the pictures of the characters are based on real things. And when a character is handwritten it is that much more related to its base in the real.”

Araki: “Handwriting is raw, and that’s why I like it. And I like photographs that are still tied to reality. I don’t want them to lose their humidity, so I stop and shoot before the become refined or sophisticated. ‘Incomplete’ photographs are more attractive, they possess the past and the future– they move. ‘Complete’ photos make me feel like I am alone in a coffin.”

昨日となりのアパートのごみすてで段ボール箱の上に小さいなアルバムあった。箱の中にあった物はなんか少し前の女子高校生のだったそうだった。写真を捨てるなんて勿体無いと思ったけど三日間毎朝あのアルバムはそのまま同じ格好あってやっとゴミトラックが来るの日拾ってしまった。

そのアルバムの中二枚スゴイ写真を見せたいです：

These two beautiful photos are from an album I found in my neighbor’s trash.

A more specifically worded statement would be this–> The two beautiful photos above are from a small album that was sticking out of a box of belongings* that sat in the trash area of an apartment down my street for 3 days.

Despite wanting the album from day one, I let it sit there for a few days just in case whoever left a beat-up cardboard box on the curb decided that they wanted that stuff back. Today the trash came so it seems that they were saved just in time. I don’t really know what to do with them but it is a waste to toss photographs and so they were re-appropriated into my apartment. They prove something- what was there when someone decided that it was an occasion to make a photograph. But also something else that deals with the value of how found snapshots are devoid of external context and their purity due to that same fact.

*contents: it was the paper-based jetsam of a young woman’s teen years- think uncut print club sheets and notes and returned test papers and flimsy paper photo albums with school trip photos taken with a disposable camera. These were ruined by the rain.

More photographic excellence has been recently posted on Square America: African-American Snapshots & Portraits

You will learn more about photographs after an hour on Square America than you could after spending weeks on Flickr or other popular photo sharing sites.

also

You will learn more about photography from 100 Polaroid shots than you could with 1000 DSLR “captures”.
(no, I am not over this yet )