considering pictures | sean justice > open journal

On the computer all day. Had to take a break late this afternoon. What does the rain look like? These are regular woods up the hill from my house. I'm crouching in the wet mud and pointing my camera slightly up. In a month the leaves will be thick against the sky.

from "On Visibility," in The Sense of Sight: Look: White transparent curtains across the window. Light coming from the right. Shadows of folds, hanging folds, darker than clouds. Suddenly sunlight. The window frames now cast shadows across the curtains. The shadows are convoluted following the folds: the window frames are straight and rectangular. In Maine this summer with my father I wasn't thinking of Berger when I took this photograph. But I'm reading these essays again lately, and unearthing inspiration from folded memories. This is where ideas come from. Even after the fact of picturing it, understanding returns slowly: then suddenly I'm paying attention to some subtle movement across the creases of my brain and simply responding. I want you to read this essay too. I'm wondering how you'll picture it.

A former student wrote yesterday: "I am still struggling with critiquing my own work, just because nothing is ever really good enough, and I am still wondering as to what is a 'good image' that I took versus one that is not meaningful. With 'good', I mean: do my images ever really say anything or are they considered just snapshots of the moment? I am thoroughly confused..." This kind of confusion, it seems to me, is the point of learning photography. I usually begin a course with demonstrations and instruction in the basics of cameras and computer imaging. A short history of the camera and of photography follows immediately. And then the main point: long weeks of making pictures, showing them to each other, and talking about them. My hope is to shove the apparatus to the background and focus on the process of the making meaning, which emerges from the conversation. The camera and computer will become a massive distraction for the new photographer unless...