Two Women Who Look

Elaine Mayes

“I’m not interested in creativity, I’m interested in seeing.”That’s a quote from Elaine Mayes at Hampshire College yesterday. She guided her audience on a personal voyage through her career of seeing.

Here’s a picture she took on Hampshire College campus when she was teaching there.

Hampshire College in winter by Elaine Mayes

The art of photography has changed since the conceptual evolution of Post-Modernism in the 1980s and the digital revolution of the 30 years since. One thing that hasn’t changed, photography remains about seeing. Yes, many artists continue to use photography as a springboard for their  ideas about the world, but most photographers choose to look. The camera continues to be the tool through which we see and interpret the world.

New work by Sally Mann

Sally Mann discusses her new pictures on Joerg Colberg’s Conscientious. She talks at length about seeing. “I am a woman who looks. Within traditional narratives, women who look, especially women who look unflinchingly at men, have been punished… I look, all the time, at the people and places I care about, and I look with both ardor and frank, aesthetic, cold appraisal. And I look with the passions of both eye and heart, but in that ardent heart, there must also be a splinter of ice.” Read her complete essay here.