Waiting to see

Photographer Kathryn Kolb

Coming to photography has challenged me in many ways, the most important one being to change my attitude towards “looking at” things. Looking at the effect of light on a leave or how shade affects the feature of a face. They call it “seeing the light” in the professional jargon. But this is not only that. I am talking about the meaning of the reality we frame: why do we frame what we frame? And is there a meaning that we want to convey?

I recently interviewed Atlanta-based photographer Kathryn Kolb for an article to be published in the Professional Photographer Association’s magazine (in their upcomig October issue). Kathryn had this interesting remark:

“I think a lot of people, when they pick up a camera and look through the viewfinder, they see something they saw before and recognized it as a “good” photograph.” In other words, they anticipate what they will frame. To the contrary, Kathryn, in her work and in her own words, tries to capture “something that she has not seen before,” something that will surprise her and pushes her vision.

“I will look through my viewfinder and wait until I see something I haven’t seen before that works for me.” How long she will wait? It depends, but typically she admits spending an hour under a tree, looking at all the angles of branches, the shape of twigs, the leaves’ veins, the nuances of colors and hues, until it “means” something to her, until it “resonates” with each others, as she puts it. The process literally absorbs all of her attention. She is in the camera.

The key ingredient, of course, is time. Taking the time to frame and to let things happening in front of her eyes. No wander Kathryn Kolb uses an old traditional, medium size Hasselblad to take her photographs, and rolls of film to push her vision.

These remarks came back to my mind a few days after I met her as I was reading an article in the New York Times about, precisely, slow looking. “What exactly are we looking for when we roam as tourists around museums”, wonders Michael Kimmelman as he observes tourists in the Louvre hovering from one painting to the other.

“Tourists now wander through museums, seeking to fulfill their lifetime’s art history requirement in a day, wondering whether it may now be the quantity of material they pass by rather than the quality of concentration they bring to what few things they choose to focus upon that determines whether they have “done” the Louvre. It is self-improvement on the fly.” He advocates, following the work of art historian T.J. Clark, to slow down and practice slow looking. Buy a sketchbook and practice drawing. “Slow looking, like slow cooking, may yet become the new radical chic,” he ventures.

I am all for it. With sketchbooks but also with our cameras. Maybe the artists living in the South, such as Kathryn Kolb, can teach us something about it.

Kathryn Kolb’s work can be seen on line on her website at www.kathrynkolb.com and on her newly-released book, “Kathryn Kolb photographs” (K2 Press).

Also worth the visit is the juried exhibition held by Slow Exposures, which “creates an annual celebration of photography to remind visitors to “slow down” by letting the images surprise, educate, reacquaint and challenge their perceptions of the rural south.”