Re: [Leica] Why I photograph - a valentine

["Ted Bayer" <tedbayer@harbornet.com>]

Mark:

Very beautiful photograph, and poem.  And your message below is right on
the money.

My wife and I recently reviewed about half of our slides (we have over
6000) taken over the past 50 years, and picked out 200 of them: our
children growing up; their grandparents; and us; and had them printed.
We gave them to our children at Christmas and they and our grandchildren
children can't stop telling us how much they mean to them.

As we reviewed all those wonderful images (and many of them were
certainly technically imperfect from a photographic point of view) we
relived many wonderful moments that had temporarily been forgotten.
That in and of itself was a priceless gift to us.

Yes, a camera can capture many important and wonderful things, but, to
me, it has no higher purpose than to capture moments in the life of
someone I love.

Thank you for stating this so succinctly.

Ted in Olalla

- ----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Davison" <DAVISON_M@msn.com>
To: "Leica User Group" <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2002 10:44 AM
Subject: [Leica] Why I photograph - a valentine


> Yesterday I made a valentine for my wife, using the picture
>
> http://www.leica-gallery.net/markdavison/image-24669.html
>
> and a short poem:
>
> Rooms
>
> There are rooms where the light falls
>  and lingers like the memory of a caress.
> There are rooms where passion flares,
>  is savoured, and not forgotten.
> There are rooms where love enters,
>  and never leaves, haunting the smallest crevice with sweetness.
> Let us live out our lives in these rooms.
>
>
> It is not an award-winning photograph, suffused as it is with flare,
even
> with Solms best 35mm lens. My eighth grade English teacher would
probably
> blanch at the poem. But the two together convey a sentiment much more
> strongly than any Hallmark card I could buy.
>
> So for me the question is not, how do I become and award winning
artist or
> photo-journalist? The question is, how can I use art and technique to
make
> my own personal communications powerful, honest, true, sometimes near
> beautiful? In short, can I use the camera to make my own art, and not
be
> forever at the mercy of general purpose images shot by someone else.
>
> Sometimes a message is no less important because it has an audience of
one.
>
> I think we should stop belittling people who just want to take better
> pictures of their family joys and sorrows, for their family. What
higher
> purpose could a camera, and a democratic art form, really serve?
>
> Happy valentine's day a day late.
>
> Mark Davison
>
>
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