Rene Magritte

http://hungeree.com/culture/magritte-the-mystery-of-the-ordinary/

Short Demonstration on how to see the "zones"

http://youtu.be/Dwar84JIcro

An image from FIAT LUX, Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall's 1967 book for the Centennial of the University of California, is used to illustrate Adams' renown Zone System of analyzing scene luminance for proper exposure in photography. This video is a part of the FIAT LUX REDUX exhibition at UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library. Video animation by Kwame Braun, analysis courtesy of Alan Ross.

Clip of Ric Burns film about Ansel Adams

8 minute clip of a Ric Burns film about Ansel Adams

http://youtu.be/KjoRrwO_PfI

On Alfred Stieglitz and "Equivalents"

How I Came to Photograph Clouds
Alfred Steiglitz, The Amateur Photographer & Photography, Vol. 56, No. 1819, p. 255, 1923


"...My mother was dying. Our estate was going to pieces. The old horse of 37 was being kept alive by the 70-year-old coachman. I, full of the feeling of today: all about me disintegration—slow but sure: dying chestnut trees—all the chestnuts in this country have been dying for years: the pines doomed too—diseased: I, poor, but at work: the world in a great mess: the human being a queer animal—not as dignified as our giant chestnut tree on the hill."

http://jnevins.com/steiglitzclouds.htm

David Heald, a Redding resident organized this show of Paul Caponigro's work at the Mark Twain Library

Light Shaft, Nahant Seashore, Nahant, Mass., 1964

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

Reflections of suns and moons and stars! Unfortunately, this is as close as I can get to the actual subjects, although at times I believe I can catch the reflections in my mind's eye. It is interesting that I can find in nature, by the way I look at it, the material to manifest in photographs my inner reflections.

Cabbage leaf, Winthrop, Mass 1964

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

...Or am I doing the investing when I look at the picture? Then why do I invest or shape? In themselves, images mean little. What one brings to them or what one hopes or expects from them constitutes a meaning: Most of us tend to take things too literally by way of sense and learned identification. I want to get at another aspect of experiencing, to see beyond the image, behind appearance. Taking things too literally stands in the way of this-like a veil.

Apple, New York 1964

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

(Referred to as the Galaxy Apple)

Seeing things in nature radiate a being of their own is important to me. How can one do this unless one really loves? All good art, if seen and perceived simply and openly (without prejudice or preference), gives us the chance to experience this sense of otherness within the physical thing. Is it only a bowl of fruit? Or is it invested with something that makes it more than a bowl of fruit?

Nahant, Mass 1966

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

Photography is a medium, a language, through which I might come to experience directly, live more closely with, the interaction between myself and nature.

Nahant, Mass 1966

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

Work incessantly, cultivate discrimination, gather freedom from your own hard-earned results. Disregard successes but go back to them for help in an immediate problem. The possibility of discovery is everywhere. Freedom from your own work allows for intuition that draws from all your experience and perception but goes beyond it.

Cloisters, New York 1965

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

Who has the lime today really the time, to grow, to unfold, and develop in an activity or even to contemplate properly what others are doing? Life ought to be lived more like harmonious music. The pressure of hastening things, of skimming superficially, only destroys that sense of music in life.

Woods Series, Redding, Conn 1968

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

Of all my photographs, the ones that have the most meaning for me are those I was moved to make from a certain vantage point, at a certain moment and no other, and for which I did not draw on my abilities to fabricate a picture, composition-wise or other-wise. You might say that I was taken in, Who or what takes one to a vantage point or moves one at a certain moment is a mystery to me. I have always felt after such experiences that there was more than myself involved, It is not chance, It happens oflen, In looking back at a particular picture and trying to recall the experience which led to it, that inexplicable element is still present. I have no other way to express what I mean than to say that more than myself is present. I cannot deny or put aside these subtle inner experiences, They are real. I feel and know them to be so. I cannot pass it off as wild imagination or hallucination, It is illusive, but the strength of it makes me yearn for it, as if trying to recall or remember an actual time, or place, or person, long past or forgotten. I hope, sometime in my life, to reach the source of it.

Woods Series, Redding, Conn 1968

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

Photography's potential as a great image-maker and communicator is really no different from the same potential in the best poetry where familiar, everyday words, placed within a special contextl can soar above the intellect and touch subtle reality in a unique way.

Kentucky 1965

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

What about those images not thought out, but made with inner quiet? I am there, not only moving toward creation but toward realization. Knowledge and viewpoint are at the service of what, in me, wants to know. I feel my way. I know and direct up to a point and only so far as nature cooperates to carry out what I feel. We must be ready to use whatever in us is necessary to complete or manifest what we feel. In the end, I produce something that is a surprise to me. There are no rules. I only work and say what I have discovered.

Woods Series, Redding, Conn 1968

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

What about those images not thought out, but made with inner quiet? I am there, not only moving toward creation but toward realization. Knowledge and viewpoint are at the service of what, in me, wants to know. I feel my way. I know and direct up to a point and only so far as nature cooperates to carry out what I feel. We must be ready to use whatever in us is necessary to complete or manifest what we feel. In the end, I produce something that is a surprise to me. There are no rules. I only work and say what I have discovered.

Snow Forms #2, Ipswich, Mass.1961

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

Something so delicate, so beautiful and magical as snowflakes. I was making pictures of snow and seeing in it such solid forms. Suddenly I thought of being made of many snowflakes, and just as suddenly I sent them flying to the skies back from whence they came. Unfortunately, I could not detect their resting place. There is a limit to the imagination, after all, and I am now talking about my own internal skies, the desire to know who I am.

Snow Forms #1, Ipswich, Mass.1961

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

Woods Series, Redding, Conn 1968

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

To penetrate and record, even if only reflectively through an idea-image, that which takes place in, over, under, around, and through nature, is to feel the intangible, the somewhere in between, the what is and the what I am, the interaction between visible and invisible. This is what I look for-what I am interested in. I am concerned with what grows out of interaction. p12

Brewster, NY 1963
(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)



At times I make photographs for the sheer magic of its process and the good feeling about the very stuff needed: light, chemical combinations, some imperceptible forces at work behind the scene. I am intrigued with it always. I am a part of the drama which takes the guise of photography. p12 IBID

Brewster, NY, 1963

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

Some of my pictures have always been a mystery to me in terms of how I arrived at them. Even with the technical ability to produce fine prints, I am hard put to know how it happens. Yet, unless technique and materials are seriously investigated and experienced, I see that moving statements are seldom made. The process of photography ever invites me. I hope never to lose this feeling. p12, Caponigro

Frost Window #2, Ipswich, Mass. 1961

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

From my initial responses to nature came the desire to carry it in some form back to my house. After a time this led to the discovery of the weaving one can do with a photographic technique and then on to a process of soul searching. 

I made the discovery that yes, I see things distinctly and differently from others in that I am so, and, so what? And on to the necessity of becoming simple and pure in my seeing and in my recording if I am to approach even the possibility of understanding. I must bring my activity to reverence-to love of work and to love of life.

Frost Window #1, Revere Mss, 1957

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

The photographs of Paul Caponigro appear out of the flux and flow of his life somewhat as crystals are formed. Once formed, his images seem independent. But this is not entirely true, so to indicate some of the connections Paul's words are included. From the words some of the currents in his life can be seen, and something of the struggle by which the crystaline images came to him.
If we see his images simply and directly, we may find the image-crystals dissolve into our own lives. They may engender calm or turbulence, being or love, or who knows what is in store for each of us.
p2, Paul Caponigro

Fungus, Mass 1962

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

Ice Wall & Rock, Gloucester, Mass 1962

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

In looking back at a particular picture and trying to recall the experience which led to it, that inexplicable element is still present. I have no other way to express what I mean than to say that more than myself is present. I cannot deny or put aside these subtle inner experiences. They are real. I feel and know them to be so. I cannot pass it off as wild imagination or hallucination. It is illusive, but the strength of it makes me yearn for it, as if trying to recall or remember an actual time, or place, or person, long past or forgotten. I hope, sometime in my life, to reach the source of it.

The Flumes Great Basin, White Mts, New Hampshire 1960

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

Of all my photographs, the ones that have the most meaning for me are those
I was moved to make from a certain vantage point, at a certain moment and no other, and for which I did not draw on my abilities to fabricate a picture, composition-wise or other-wise. You might say that I was taken in. Who or what takes one to a vantage point or moves one at a certain moment is a mystery to me. I have always felt after such experiences that there was more than myself
involved. It is not chance. It happens often.

Paul Caponigro, Quantock Hills, Somserset (1987)

photograph & copyright: Nick Lloyd

I first became aware of the work of Paul Caponigro in 1970 with the publication, Paul Caponigro: An Aperture Monograph, 1967. Hi example was in large part the reason I dedicated my life to photography and teaching. I was fortunate to meet Paul when he came to RIT in 1975 to give a week-end workshop for the photography MFA students that included shooting and darkroom time. This wonderful interview reveals an important period in American photography....JN

Link to interview:http://jnevins.com/Caponigro1.html

West Hartford, CT, 1959

From Paul Caponigro: An Aperture Monograph, 1967 first edition p20

(copyright by Paul Caponigro/respective copyright holders)

What about those images not thought out, but made with an inner quiet?  I am there, not only moving toward creation but toward realization.  Knowledge and viewpoint are at the service of what, in me, wants to know.  I feel my way.  I know and direct up to a  point and only so far as nature cooperates to carry out what I feel.  We must be ready to use whatever in us necessary to complete or manifest what we feel.  In the end, I produce something that is a surprise to me.  There are no rules. I only work and say what I have discovered.