“How can one live without hope and longing?”
-Sarah Moon
Sara Moon and her work have always been a big inspiration for me. Her work is soulful, it’s work that obviously comes from a very deep and emotional person because it provokes the viewer in a deep and meaningful way. Her work is pure. I’m sure she has never had her work in photoshop, ever. I love that about it. It’s grainy, soft focused, blurry at times and utterly flawless. I recently found this video and 5 seconds in, I was hooked. To hear one of the great masters of fashion photography speak her mind about the art and the craft is a gift. And so I listened and learned. I replayed one section over a few times. It was so beautiful, the way she described her process of shooting fashion. It reminded me of my own process, my own desire to capture a moment, an instant where everything makes sense to me and the line between reality and delusion is blurred. I believe magic resides on that line, and magic is what I as a photographer, try to create. I want to seduce my viewers and please my audience with visual pleasure. The section I am speaking of is where she talks about how she has the model in front of her but she’s not “seeing” the shot. So she waits. The model becomes discouraged. She take a few photographs to appease the model but still, nothing. She begins to panic, telling herself she doesn’t want to be a photographer anymore ( I can’t tell you how many times I say this to myself and others. You’d be surprised, probably). But then something changes! Maybe, she says, I’m at the right place at the right time. Or maybe it’s because she starts to believe in it. But for a split second she sees a sparkle of beauty passing by and then everything goes so quickly within that stillness and she’s carried away….at last she likes what she is seeing and she can’t stop finding it and then losing it. All day long she keeps on, because it once existed.
And that is absolutely the process for me of taking photographs. Chasing something I see that lasted a second. A moment of grace. A moment of beauty. Sometimes it can never be recaptured.Sometimes it’s gone, disappeared, never to return. But I’ll tell you what….. I’m going to die trying.
Some of Sarah’s work:
Fashion Photography Blog – A Resource for Fashion Photographers, Created by One.
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