I taught this lighting class at the DeCordova this winter. DeCordova, for being a smaller sized museum (and sculpture park), has a rather sizable photography collection.As part of the course, I was encouraged to include the museum's collection in the "curriculum," as it were. Which I was pretty ecstatic about.
In Paris I had a class called "Museums." It was awful. I had to go to a different museum every week and see fantastic photography and learn about all the greats. Just awful.
So needless to say, this brought me back there and wishing .... well ... wishing.
Saw some amazing photographers and their work - not behind glass or in the pages of a book:
- Doc Edgarton (incidentally, the first place I ever heard of Edgarton was at a DeCordova show in the 90's)
- Walker Evans
- Larry Fink
- Charles "Teenie" Harris
- Jacobi Lotte
- Arnold Newman
- Edward Steichen
- Eugene Richards (heard him talk at an agency VII conference in London once)
- Arno Minkkinen
- Brad Washburn
- And a few others ...
One thing I learned out of teaching this class that blew my mind was that perhaps I do like landscape photography after all. They bored me. I'm not afraid to say it. But seeing Brad Washburn's stuff, up close and personal, was amazing.I understood for the first time how hard it is to take a picture of a mountain. I'd been spewing on and on to the students the importance of light -- creating it, taking it away, shaping and molding it. Well holy smokes! Imagine if you had no possible way on earth to "strobe" a mountain and / or "flag" it!? Jesus. That's some serious talent. Props brah.
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