Henry Wessel

Henry Wessel

While surfing the internet, I found the following interesting reflection from the American photographer Henry Wessel. Despite the fact that Henry Wessel’s photos do not arouse in me the sense of instinct or intuition that he is mentioning, I am nonetheless in agreement with his views.

“ You know, your mind is always back there saying: Move a little to the left. Move a little to... You wanna beat that. You cannot be thinking. You’re just, yes, feeling. Yes, boom, here, there, whatever. Once you recognize something, then you’re actually less aware. You name it, right? Once you name something -you name a telephone pole, you’re less aware. But if you are not naming anything, then you’re aware. More animal-like. So the mind’s always in there saying " Ah, look at that. ", you know. Telephone pole. Right? Macadam. This, move right, move left. So you wind up, in most cases, making maybe five pictures, six pictures of- the same stuff. The first ones, you could see how different they are than the ones when your mind got in there. When your mind gets in there, they start to look like photographs that you already know. They look like problems that you’ve already solved. They’re never taking you to a place that’s unfamiliar. They’re taking you to what you’re supposed to do. Then they look like everybody else’s photographs. It’s like when people say : " I see something, and then I wanna go up and ask someone if I can photograph. " You can’t photograph it. It’s gone! What you saw was gone. Now you’re gonna photograph something else.