I’ve been thinking lately about artists, and about blank pieces of paper. I’ve been thinking about art, and how art gets made, but my mind keeps coming back to that blank piece of paper, because, when you get down to it, that is where art begins: a blank canvas, an unexposed piece of film, and empty stage.I invite you to join me in a little exercise in Art Appreciation (I have some friends who are ballet dancers and they will help us with this exercise.) You, the dancers and I will go into a ballet studio and we’ll put on some music--Stravinsky, let’s say, or if that’s not to your liking, maybe something by Aaron Copland. Now you go out onto the studio floor with the dancers and you tell them what to do. You be a choreographer, the dancers will do whatever you say. Make your own ballet, something simple, just five minutes of movement. You make art. Go ahead, tell the dancers what you want them to do... the dancers are waiting...
Or perhaps you enjoy a good book, you love reading? Maybe you have told friends that one day you'd like to write a book, an essay, a short story? Well your friends and I think you should try your hand at being a writer, and we think there’s no time like the present: We invite you to sit there at your computer and we will go make you a cup of coffee. Sit there for 10 minutes (or 10 hours) and write one good paragraph, something you’d feel good about reading aloud to a gathering your friends and I will host for you one evening at the local bookstore...
My point is this: It’s no wonder that artists tend to be crazy, that they are individuals who are kind of out-there, living in a world where most of us dare not go. Imagine the courage--more importantly, imagine the inspiration--it takes to choreograph a ballet, write a short story, paint or photograph the world we see around us.
Thirty-some years ago when I was beginning my life in photography, I read something that inspires me to this day. It was the credo of Life Magazine, and, though I was only 19-years-old, I realized that as long as I had a camera and film, then the world around me would always be there for exploration.
To see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud; to see strange things -- machines, armies, multitudes, shadows in the jungle and on the moon; to see man's work -- his paintings, towers and discoveries; to see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to; the women men love and many children; to see and to take pleasure in seeing; to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed...
