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A PHOTOGRAPHIC EDUCATION The scales dropped from my eyes, artistically speaking, working for Grand Central Artists as a delivery boy my last semester at Stuyvesant High School. I was befriended by a bunch of foul-mouthed artists working in the framing department to earn their daily bread who demanded that I visit the city’s museums to further my education. Usually they sent me to specific museum galleries, and I had to report on what I had seen. Their comments on what I had missed taught me that seeing was an intellectual and emotional process and not merely a visual and passive one.
&My introduction to photography took place after Brooklyn College while working at Photographic Trade News, where, despite my ignorance of the subject, I wrote articles telling camera store owners how to run their businesses. All of the other editors were enthusiastic amateurs, one of whom sold me a Minolta A, my first camera. The editors took great delight in pointing out the errors in my first feeble photographic attempts.
My photographic education continued, courtesy of the U.S. Army, first at Ft. Benning and then in Korea. At Benning I edited the base paper, The Fort Benning Bayonet, and learned dark room techniques after working hours at one of the many recreational facilities provided to keep the troops out of trouble. In Korea, working as a reporter for Stars & Stripes who took his own photos, I had ample opportunity to hone and develop my photographic skills. I created a niche for myself by my willingness to do photo-features of Korea’s cultural and artistic treasures, leaving hard news, military affairs and sports to my colleagues. A good deal of my current work stems from that experience.
I discovered ink painting and calligraphy during two-weeks of R&R (rest and recreation) in Japan where I was entranced by the power of negative space in those works. I believe that much of what is good in my photos is due to attempts to translate the Chinese handling of space in terms of the photographic image. My debt to calligraphy is perhaps more obscure, but I believe that the dynamic balance and tension that exist in each brush character are reflected in the composition of my pictures.
After the army, I worked for a couple of years editing medical and psychological books. Here my duties included layout and design, leading to an enhanced appreciation of the look of the page and the use of ‘empty’ space to create good design. The connection of this work to the creation of a photographic print is obvious.
Graduate school followed by some thirty years in the English department at Queensborough Community College somewhat slowed my photographic activities, but I was able to embark on ‘post-graduate’ studies of the art through the able tutelage of Professor John Hawkins, print maker, drawing instructor and former chair of the Art Department.
Although I had little talent for drawing, I took his course hoping, correctly, that translating three dimensional scenes onto a two-dimensional plane would give insight into composition of the photographic print. These studies were supplemented by insightful discussions of the nature of art, illustrated by monthly visits to museums and galleries throughout our careers at Queensborough. My friends in the framing department at Grand Central would have approved. His fantastic energy and appetite pursuing visual experience has always inspired me although I could never hope to match him. Professor Hawkins has always been lavish in the expenditure of time and thought he has devoted to my photos. His gentle but incisive criticism has improved my work both at the viewfinder and the editing screen. I have always counted myself fortunate to have him as teacher, colleague and friend.
After retirement I had more time to roam the streets of New York searching for camera material, and my travels produced photographic essays pursued in Italy, Greece, Amsterdam, France and wherever else my wife decided we must go. Before my retirement I was also able to keep my eye in through bird watching and astronomy. My hours at the eyepiece of binoculars, telescope and camera provided invaluable experiences in seeing.
The motive behind all these efforts is exactly expressed by Browning’s Fra Lippo Lippi who justifies his realistic art against clerical censure in favor of a more ‘spiritual’ style when he claims that we are “made so that we love / First when we see them painted, things we have passed / Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see.” If the viewer responds to one of my photos with pleasure, I have succeeded in presenting a small example of the imperishable beauty of the world, and my work is finished and fully justified.
Arnold Asrelsky |
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