AS LOUD AS A WHISPER

By MICHAEL PERKINS

THE GRAPHIC ARTIST CHARLEY HARPER was dead and buried some twenty years or more before his balletic interpretations of the natural world were “discovered”, even though, during his lifetime, his commercial work was published in the world’s most popular magazines and generations of school kids viewed the illustrations he created for their nature and science books. What happened to make Charley a newly “found” treasure was twofold: first, over a lifetime, he steadily streamlined and simplified his style to convey animals, insects and the elements in fewer and fewer lines, constantly learning how to put an idea across without excess ornamentation; and secondly, and perhaps equally important, his audience, which had always accepted Charley’s eye as a natural way of seeing the world, came to realize just how difficult it was for him to make it all look so effortless.

Photography, never a final product but a lifetime process, works the same way. The first versions of our visions can be cluttered, busy, an audition for attention (or “likes”, if you prefer) as the artist struggles for acceptance. We tend to throw everything into the soup. We initially regard words like “minimalism” with suspicion, as if the work done under that term is somehow incomplete. However, if we are lucky, we come to see mere compiling of detail as occasionally unnecessary for the task at hand, which is to convey an idea.

I don’t always have the discipline to shoot with the bare essentials in mind. I defer to sharpness; I become fixated not with the bridge but with the billion bolts holding the bridge together. Pulling stuff out, doing more with less, is never instinctual to me. If I were a small child making a drawing of a sunset, such as the one seen here, I would likely make it about simple shapes, basic colors and a direct message. Unfortunately, I grew into an adult and started gilding the lily. In terms of writing, same same. This blog tends to bloat in its first drafts, whereas the posts I re-write the most somehow become shorter and clearer. In viewing our images, especially those from earlier versions of ourselves, it’s worth asking whether we could have upped our impact by turning down the distractions.

Sometimes we use our cameras to shout. Sometimes, a whisper will suffice. Charley Harper knew that he was in a partnership, a conversation, with his audience. He was thus free to use his simplified style as an opening remark, waiting for others to jump in and supply the rest of the thought. When we conform that kind of relationship with our photographs, connections with our viewers become truer.

Stronger.