Missing pieces.

It all started with watching an Ansel Adams video. After watching that video, I watched more and more of them until I ran into a site, Cybelephotography’s Channel. I stayed here for quite a while because, quite frankly, I was captivated by the number of outstanding images that I saw.

I don’t make a big deal about being black. I think that there’s already to much categorization already. Black. White. Mexican. Muslim, etc. You can hardly watch the news without being subjected to a race/religion/nationality adjective. I find it boring, unnecessary, and downright derisive most times.

However, as I looked through the images of such greats as Harry Callahan, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and other people photographers, I noticed that something was missing. People like me. I think that inherently, people tend to stick to subjects, or people, that they are familiar with. There is a great amount of fear in the unfamiliar.

I’ll admit to ignorance about black photographers because, quite frankly, no one ever talks about them and I never made an effort to find them; however, in looking at the works of James Van der Zee, and Gordon Parks, a former Vogue and Life magazine photographer, I was impressed and inspired. Not for something so shallow as skin color, but because I saw the history of my people in their pictures. There was some cultural relevance. It felt good.

While listening to one of many podcasts that you were so kind to recommend, I heard one photographer say that he believes that one essential ingredient for improvement of your own photography is to view and collect the work of others that you admire. He said that the more you look, the more ideas that you get. It’s an interesting point of view. I don’t own any photographs, neither prints nor posters of other photographers, but I saw a few that I liked in these collections.

I will probably look for some biographies, picture books, etc. It just seems to make sense. This will more than likely be my sole collection, but it will certainly add a bit of diversity to my viewing.