72 North Union St.
One of the first things I ever remember reading about photography is loosely quoted as, “You can spend your whole life photographing the block you live on.” I cannot remember the source as I write this today, so many years later, but I do remember who said it. It was Minor White.
I was a teenager just beginning to seek the words, pictures and basic wisdom of those that made the same struggles I was beginning to experience in walking out into the world to make photographs, reacting to my life and the things in front of me. It was that sentence that pointed out to me that where I was wasn’t what was important in making a great photograph, rather it was who I was that mattered. I took this to heart and ever since, I can see no other way of looking.
Certainly subject matter plays its role, as does equipment, technique, the history of photography preceding yourself and the physical location the photographs themselves are to be made in. Many times a photograph of an amazing place is just that, a photograph of an amazing place, not really an amazing photograph. The photographs that inspire me, in making or viewing, mine or yours, are those that go beyond the amazement of the location itself, and bring the life experience of the photographer through in the image, in whatever way, escalating the impact of the image past simply the obvious amazing location.
Part of what landed me in Rochester, NY a couple years after reading that quote was the history of the photographic community that resides there, even knowing Minor White had once taught and lived there had its meaning. So when I was 21 years old (1995) and leaving Rochester, my first home in a way, one of the last things I did before I left was seek out Minor White’s home, a place were even some of his more known images were actually made over 40 years ago, 72 North Union St. I somehow found it fitting that I should go make pictures on his block since I had no block of my own. I had no camera at this point in my life, so I borrowed one I had never used before, grabbed my last 7 rolls of 120mm film, drove over, got out and shot every frame I had in maybe an hour. All walking the small area around what used to be Minor White’s home.