considering pictures | sean justice > open journal

Sometimes I see another photographer's work just sitting around, and as I walk past I grab it up and send it to them, just in case they want it back. Zoe Strauss . You can read what I've written about her here . Part of keeping yourself inspired is loosing yourself in other people's pictures, breathing for a beat, and then resurfacing into the shared world, changed, aware, ready to pay attention.

I am so thrilled to get a note about Jan 's new pictures. We worked together in Photo One at the beginning of 2008 and it's clear that she is comfortably on her way at this point: engaged and amazed. She wrote: "I'm having a wonderful time with my photography." These pictures remind me of time and love, and the endurance of change. I like the delicate rough edges and the smooth glow. There's a three dimensional simplicity to the light, and a frank, unsentimental appraisal of the material in her framing. The objects are what they are, totally, but her willingness to stay engaged with them time after time, as they wilt and begin to disappear, speaks about something else. The pictures remind me of Blossfeldt 's cool rationalism crossed with Mapplethorpe 's dramatics, but pursued with an obsessiveness more akin to a need or longing to understand, to not let go. Ah, the humanity, right? The best part of teaching photography is this conversation that evol...