He is famously quoted as saying, using a music analogy, that “the negative is the score, and the print is the performance.” This philosophy was evident in his work. You could tell that meticulous care had been taken to achieve what he wanted in the final print. If anything did shout at me, it was the craftsmanship of his prints. View of Valley from Mountain, "Canyon de Chelly" National Monument, Arizona. They had a simplicity and "quietness." Kind of like nature itself. The monochrome prints did not scream for attention the way many colors, and even black-and-white images, so often do these days, with bold color and/or dramatic perspectives. I think this is partly a quality of black-and-white images themselves and partly a characteristic of his images in particular. To notice the lights and darks and the play of the light across the land. They invited me to look closer and contemplate. The compositions in his work were elegant but simple, and the scenes just drew me in. One of the first things that struck me was a quality that I can only call the “quietness” of the images. And I found that the answer was a resounding yes. The experience gave me the opportunity to answer this question for myself. I had the chance to see an exhibition of some of his more iconic images a while back, having long been a fan but never really having the chance to see a collection of his actual prints up until that point.
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