Lauren Henkin Blog

After attending PhotoLucida, I took a 1 day workshop at Newspace Center for Photography with Raymond Meeks titled Time | Place. The workshop was the day after PhotoLucida ended. I was exhausted from the 4 days of portfolio reviews and while driving to Newspace, I was wondering if I shouldn’t be taking the day off from creative thought. I know, though, from experience, that in every workshop, whether a week or a day, I always walk away with something of importance. This experience was not different.

The plan for the day was to spend a few hours talking, getting to know one another and what our individual goals are. Then, we would head off to a site about 20 minutes outside of Portland and watch Raymond make a photograph (see picture below) and then come back and have a quick session in the darkroom developing the 8×10 negative and making a contact print.

It was interesting to go around the room and hear what everyone was hoping to learn and their different approaches to photography. I believe there were 7 students and I was surprised to learn of everyone’s differing backgrounds. There was a commercial photographer, a few who had just gotten back into photography from a long hiatus, one who is a successful fine artist, and two of us had just finished the PhotoLucida experience. We talked a lot about the importance of leaving some questions unanswered in images. We talked about how each of us has been influenced by other photographers. He told a story about contacting Sally Mann and asking her if she thought he was infringing on her style. I appreciated that very much. George Tice has been a big influence on me. I took a workshop with him in Maine a few years ago and beyond learning how a fine print should look, I learned something I didn’t expect. I realized that it was ok to be an urban landscape photographer working on the east coast — that I didn’t need to be in New Mexico photographing the landscapes that many others before me had already shot. This was a very important realization. I bring this up because I don’t recall the description for the workshop saying something like, “Also, you will learn that you don’t have to be a world traveler to develop your vision as a fine artist! You’ll realize you can photograph in your own back yard!” There are things I have learned in every class/workshop that were unexpected. After that workshop I went to work in Charleston, West Virginia on a portfolio I ultimately named The Other Charleston. I’m not sure I would have committed to that project if I hadn’t seen the beauty in George Tice’s work in Paterson, NJ.

I wrote in another post about the artist book that I prepared for PhotoLucida of my series Displaced. I was really interesting in taking this workshop because of Raymond’s success in publishing. I’m not sure what I wanted to hear from him exactly, but I guess I just hoped to gain any knowledge or insight into the publishing process. He shared with us a new book about to be released by Nazraeli Press as well as some handmade books that he had made with the help of his son as designer. I found this part of the day the most interesting. In particular, he showed us one small book with maybe 12 images of his son mowing the lawn… back and forth, row by row. It was a very intimate short book and one I admired very much. I knew then, immediately, what I would take away from the workshop.

During PhotoLucida, Jim Casper of LensCulture presented a midday lecture on a couple of photographers using innovative methods for image creation and presentation. There were some very grand and elaborate processes being shown. One photographer, Myoung Ho Lee, was framing trees with white backdrops in their natural environments. Some of the white canvases span 60 x 45 feet and he uses a crew and cranes to set them up. I remember watching this lecture wondering if Mr. Casper was trying to show us that this is good work, or if it’s the process that is the actual art. I wonder a lot when I visit galleries whether it is value is in the actual piece of art or the process in which it was created. I left that lecture feeling a little overwhelmed and anxious about the difficulty in competing for attention with so many other photographers and wondering, “Do I need to come up with such an expensive and elaborate method for capturing my subjects?”

With that lecture fresh on my mind, seeing Meeks’ little book about his son mowing the lawn made me realize this: I am not a photographer who will orchestrate cranes and a crew to take a picture. I like the solitude of photographing, I like the feeling of connecting with some other being on earth, I like the intimacy of my work. I realized that there are times when I don’t need to take such a broad approach to producing. I can do small little projects, with 10 images or so and narrate a short story instead of a novel. It was a realization that felt just as important as the one I had with Tice and I know that it will stay with me for a long time.

I was very inspired by that little Meeks book. So much so that I’m starting a new portfolio this weekend. More later…