Yes Virginia

On my local photo walk page some of the photographers were lamenting that in their opinion street photography had grown stale and that nobody was shooting anything close to what Garry Winoguard was shooting several decades ago.

I disagreed. Here’s a copy of my post:

Sorry (actually I’m not…just trying to be polite) but this is just the folly of youth. The young think they know everything and that there will never be another Elvis or The Beatles or The Rolling Stones and oh god ain’t it awful. And of course there won’t be another Winoguard either but that doesn’t suggest for a moment there won’t be someone even better. As someone who was gifted by his wife with a copy of Winoguard Color I marvel at the images and am amazed at his ability to “see” but to suggest that is the end of originality and talent is like saying there’s no reason to drag out a piece of marble and start chipping away after Michelangelo. As we’ve all said a thousand times it’s not about the camera (or any of the equipment or even the techniques…I mean look at Sally Mann working with Civil War era wet plate technology and shooting her kids on the farm. Can’t get much farther away from mainstream photography than that and yet she’s considered a modern master. Was it Time magazine that claimed her the best working photographer in America at one time? No dear friends art remains in the eye of the beholder and those of us who pretend (in my case) or may have pretenses to being an artist need to gird our loins and pick up our pinhole cameras or our celllphones or our Leicas and go forth and produce our art. Nothing of much value comes from carping on FaceBook although I do enjoy the chatter. Do you not know of Virginia? She was the little girl who in 1897 wrote to the editor of the New York Sun and asked: “I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, ‘If you see it in The Sun, it’s so’.” The editor’s answer I think applies here. He said: “Virginia your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see.” And so, I refuse to believe that excellence and creativity and opportunity do not abound on our streets and in our cities. I cannot believe that somewhere someone is not creating some extraordinary photographic art. Hope burns eternal in my heart. And in my own small way I will load my film camera on Saturday and join the Toronto Photo Walk group in search of the etherial and the evanescent moments and things that appear before me. Trust in yourself. Rise up. Be amazing.