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

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 strange, so sad that Weegee, writing about Stieglitz, was predicting his own loneliness and decline into obscurity. But Weegee’s book does end on a bright note. Its final words are: “Be original and develop your own style, but don’t forget above anything and everything else…be human…think…feel. When you find yourself beginning to feel a bond bet

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.”

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

• Words of wisdom for every photographer: “Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.” So said Goethe.

In the ancient Greek world there was no need for contemplation. It was agreed. The greatest sin of all was hubris: an exaggerated pride which leads one to claim more than is one’s due.

What I want to know — and I think this is very important because it is at the heart of almost all art education in this country — is there any empirical, verifiable evidence that art education creates “better” human beings or “improves” our culture? If not, then this accepted value of art constitutes merely a cultural belief system and the art-is-g

The best paragraph in the whole issue was a story told by Ben Shahn, one of the most fascinating photographers to have worked for the Farm Security Administration during the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s. In search of a loan, a farmer was coldly rejected by a banker. In the face of the farmer’s pleas, the banker made him a “sporting offer,” recalled

• 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.