I don't trust any camera you can't make out of wood. Paul Caponigro More Quotes by Paul Caponigro More Quotes From Paul Caponigro It's one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it's another thing to make a portrait of who they are. Paul Caponigro portraits photography inspirational Photography is a medium, a language, through which I might come to experience directly, live more closely with, the interaction between myself and nature. Paul Caponigro photography photographer might The key is to not let the camera, which depicts nature in so much detail, reveal just what the eye picks up, but what the heart picks up as well. Paul Caponigro eye keys heart The influence of mystery is the greatest influence. Paul Caponigro mystery influence photographer We always point the lens both outward and inward. Paul Caponigro inward lenses Photography is not easy. You know it takes a painter or a sculpture or a musician years to perfect their technique. Then they're free to make an expression in a matter of moments. It takes moments for a photographer to perfect his technique. And then it takes years for him to make it into something that is truly creative and worthwhile. Paul Caponigro photography expression years At the root of creativity is an impulse to understand, to make sense of random and often unrelated details. For me, photography provides an intersection of time, space, light, and emotional stance. One needs to be still enough, observant enough, and aware enough to recognize the life of the materials, to be able to 'hear through the eyes'. Paul Caponigro creativity photography art I often see the materials of photography as being a type of terrain. Emulsions, liquid developers, silver salts, and fixers interact, and I construct a landscape that I need to first explore in my mind's eye if I am to make it manifest as an artful image in silver. Paul Caponigro eye photography mind Work incessantly, cultivate discrimination, gather freedom from your own hard-earned results. Disregard successes but go back 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. Paul Caponigro intuition perception discovery In my years of photography I have learned that many things can be sensed, seen, shaped, or resolved in a realm of quiet, well in advance of, or between, the actual clicking of shutters and the sloshing of films and papers in chemical solutions. I work to attain a state of heart, a gentle space offering inspirational substance that could purify one's vision. Photography, like music, must be born in the unmanifest world of the spirit. Paul Caponigro space photography heart The only way a work of art can become great is for one to acknowledge that it doesn't belong to anybody. The greatness is in constantly giving back, coming to an acknowledgment of the source. Look back to the source of any individual, any process, any set of materials. If the individual personality can relinquish its insistence on concepts like this is mine, I did it, this is original, nobody else has done it, it goes straight for greatness or the essential spirit. Paul Caponigro greatness giving art Keep alive the fact that a mystery has come into existence and that a physical being serves as a house for this mystery. Paul Caponigro alive house facts ... the effort, diligence, and care required in practicing must be quickly suspended when pressure coming from anxiety or a desire for fast results causes them to degenerate. Paul Caponigro anxiety effort desire I use my music to tune myself. Paul Caponigro tunes photographer use If you are engaging rationality, you are already engaging a place that makes you unavailable. Only when I recognize that inspiration has announced itself to my availability will I then say I need to use my mind to calculate exposure, my emotions to position myself and arrange a configuration of shapes that need to come into being, my body to put it all in place because we have been given a message and it has come through inspiration through being available.' Paul Caponigro availability inspiration mind I work to attain a 'state of heart', a gentle space offering inspirational substance that could purify one's vision. Photography, like music, must be born in the unmanifest world of spirit. Paul Caponigro photography offering heart 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 context, can soar above the intellect and touch subtle reality in a unique way. Paul Caponigro photography unique reality Can you keep your balance? Can you see what and where you are at any given moment? Paul Caponigro balance moments photographer All that I have achieved are these dreams locked in silver. Paul Caponigro silver photographer dream Under all of the factors that make up the art world, it's up to the individual artist to discern which of those influences are present and at what time and what really serves the deeper process that is constantly running like a stream underground. Influence is incessant. Influence is a fact. But, carry a big shovel and dig constantly to clear away all the unessentials so that the origins of mystery and the poetic force of life can get into and inspire the work. Paul Caponigro running inspire art
