GOOD FORTUNE
Substack 29 June ‘24
I am delighted to share this news of good fortune:
that my entire archive of photographs is being taken into the TopFoto collection,
which consists of a wonderful historic collection of some 5 million images.
Flora Smith, the privately run archive/picture library’s owner,
has also become my agent.
I searched for several years to find a university,
or a non-commercial museum or gallery
but to no avail.
A refrain was, “we don’t know you, so you are not of interest to us”.
I often heard that as, “Oh Mr Darcy, we have not been properly introduced.”
The pleasure in this for me is that Flora immediately understood
the nature of my documentary work.
It is that of a photojournalist who is as interested in content as in form,
and that I strive to make work which is emotional as well as informative,
which explores the beauty of the medium as well as its truthfulness.
You can see some of my work in this short video announcement here.
From the age of 10 I grew up being a photographer.
I learned of the world, of people and of life through pursuing the medium,
reading every magazine and every book I could afford.
I had brilliant mentors who not only taught me,
via their pictures and often their written words,
not only about picture making but about life.
From Alfred Stieglitz I learned about realism and as well,
about pre-visualization: the ability to imagine what an image
or a set of images should look like,
but more importantly, could emotionally communicate.
From Ansel Adams (who was also a pianist)
I learned about how nature could be as intimate
as Debussy’s PRELUDE TO THE AFTERNOON of a FAUN
and as grand as Bach’s MASS in B MINOR.
This provided for me different ways of seeing
and different ways of embracing our world.
From Edward Weston I came to understand
that I too might become an artist with a camera,
and that art was as precious as life itself.
And, as a teenager, I was particularly interested in that art
was associated with love, sex and food
as well as truth, hope and transformation.
From Henri Cartier-Bresson
I learned about searching for the moment
when emotional and compositional elements merge in a frame,
and therefore become a decisive moment in an event.
Also, his interest in other peoples and places
was an eye-opener for a kid in the broad empty plains of the American Midwest.
This led me to accept that Americans were no more or less valuable
than any other people.
From Paul Strand I learned an entirely different sense of time
captured as if in its own history,
a metaphor for what always has been.
Also, he confirmed in me that my inability to accept and to be racist
was entirely correct, moral and humane.
His images of dignified people from different classes, races and nations
confirmed for me our oneness.
And then there was W Eugene Smith, a troublesome, intense photojournalist
whose pictures I found to be testaments to beauty and to our shared humanity
as well as to the injustices that surround us.
There are more photographers, artists, poets and philosophers
who are important for me, but I want to diverge,
and to relate the above with my last week’s essay
about turning away from participating in change.
David Hume, the 18th century philosopher,
also made essential contributions to economic thought.
Those thoughts need to be seen in relationship to this:
“..that a central duty of the philosopher
was to identify threats that might transform superstition into fanaticism.”
And “…Hume was concerned at the end of his life that the selfish pursuit of material gain had corroded the national mores”.
Notes from THE END OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT by Richard Whatmore.
Hume understood the simple idea that the strangulation of people’s lives
because of economic privation would lead to a barbaric madness.
We are at the moment, teetering on the edge of this threat
that superstition (and made-up facts to suit individual’s reality)
are threatening to overwhelm us with racism and fascism
in the name of individual’s egos, lust for power, wealth and affirmation.
This is where all that I learned from those photographers
(and from critics, academics, poets and other writers and artists)
that those who are capable of producing art,
need now to make the best they can to challenge the inhumanity
of the psychopaths with the kindness that exists in so many of us.
Fantastic news!
Bravo old friend, your images of working men and women will be an inspiration to the next generation of photographers equal to any that inspired you and I.