LensWork #83 (The Bill Jay's Best of EndNotes issue)

As du Camp wrote, “The risk [of being honest] was great; but we could not let him continue this way, since at stake was a literary future in which we had absolute faith.”

As Bernard Bailey remarked, “When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed they are not it.”

” Levitt’s deadpan spunkiness emerges throughout the essay. She is a proud reporter, insisting on the exterior, matter-of-fact, impersonal quality of her work, writes Gopnik. But she refused to become a journalist. “A reporter,” according to Levitt, “says what she sees; a photojournalist sees what everyone else is saying.”

In the unlikely event that I would ever be invited to address the graduates, I would give the shortest speech on record: Dear Graduates, Find something you love to do. Get good at it. Hope, but don’t expect, others will appreciate it. Then, with luck, you might be able to make a living at it.

So I ask you, again, what evidence exists that arts students become “better” human beings? Any one?

At a family dinner, the cook cut off the ends of the ham before putting it in the oven. “Why did you do that?,” asked a guest. “I always have, because my mother always did it,” said the cook, “Go ask her.” The mother answered, “I cut off the ends because my mother did, so go ask her.” The grandmother answered, “I cut off the ends because I did not

• Beware of these two fallacies of photographic appreciation: 1) You like a photograph because you think/have been told that it is good. 2) You think a photograph is good because you like it.

He was a gifted photographer, and I did not say thank you. That’s life, but it need not be.

“Unless we know living things, how will we come to love them? Unless we learn to love them, we will not have the will to conserve, protect, or sustain them. And, to complete the argument, without them we will not exist.”

These sights are ephemeral, fleeting treasures that have been offered to me and to me alone. No other person in the history of the world, anywhere in all of time and space, has been granted this gift to be here in my place. And I am privileged, through the camera, to take this moment away with me. That is why I photograph.”