Camera Position 99 : Harder Seeing

Photographer Robert Frank said, “It is always an instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph.” Reading that quote in a wonderful essay by noted photographer and art historian Gretchen Garner, I also noted her idea that photographers respond to the world with gestures that are different from those that painters use. As Garner puts it, “Indeed, my belief is that in many ways, fine photography is more purely intellectual, purely visual, because the gestures involved are less connected to hand gestures but much more connected to intense observation, to harder seeing.”