Not A Starving Artist

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A portrait photographer depends upon another person to complete his picture. The subject imagined, which in a sense is me, must be discovered in someone else willing to take part in a fiction he cannot possibly know about.

I often feel that people come to me to be photographed as they would go to a doctor or a fortune teller —to find out how they are. So they’re dependent on me. I have to engage them. Otherwise there’s nothing to photograph. The concentration has to come from me and involve them. Sometimes the forces of it grows so strong that sounds in the studio go unheard. Time stops. We share a brief, intense intimacy. But its unearned. It has no past …no future. And when the sitting is over —when the picture is done —theres nothing left except the photograph.