Zen and the art of photography

Published on July 31, 2010 by The Editor · No Comments

The stillness that falls

By The Wowster

CJ McKinney is an urban legend. But in a real way. Her canvas is the urban landscape of Arizona and stories of the street.

Recently she discussed the soul of the camera. For this reporter it opened my eyes to so many possibilities.

When I was working in national newspapers, the photographer as paparazzi was alive and well. Not so much looking up the skirt of the world admittedly, rather trawling its garbage cans.

They even exploited the dead when the body was still warm. They would go with a reporter to the home of a mother whose son had just been run over. While the reporter broke the news to the traumatised mother, the clickster would remove a picture of the deceased from the house.

And then there was Joe. A gnome of a man, constantly drunk. His speciality was playing imaginary war games when he was waiting for an assignment. He would sit at a desk strafing ground troops with loud siren noises and planes going in for the kill.

One reporter complained about going out with Joe to interview the widow of a man who had died spectacularly in a speed boat. Joe was in no state to know what was going on, far less who she was. But when it became clear, his little arm described the dramatic incident with a sound track that a hyperactive 9-year-old would have been proud of.

Exit furious, burly reporter with diminutive bewildered photographer under his arm, leaving stunned widow.

And then there was the Joe who won national award after national award for taking the most stunning pictures imaginable. I never knew how he did it. How he could look into the soul of a desperate moment or the joy of rapture and entirely capture it. He didn’t either, at least he couldn’t talk about it.

McKinney says this:

“I believe that the camera is a tool for seeing, for learning, and for growth. You don’t have to be a professional.

“You don’t have to know much about shutter speeds and apertures. But there is a stillness that falls just at the moment when the shutter button is pressed — the stillness that Cartier-Bresson speaks of, when photographer and subject become united through the camera.”

Joe would have liked that.

What’s your greatest experience with a camera. Or do you think CJ might be going a bit overboard? Comments as always warmly welcome.