Antonio Pires
Friday, April 27, 2007 at 09:31AM 
click to embiggenDear Mark Hobson
My name is António Pires and I am living in Lisbon, Portugal.
I wouldn't show the attached photo to anyone, had I not seen your civilized ku # 13, of March 27. May be the subject isn't "noble" enough, or academic enough. But if the subject is good enough for a photographer to post an image of it, well, why not me? Thanks for helping me have one less prejudice.
I am not a photographer, I just take photos. When I looked at the scene, the composition was pleasant and so I took the photo. And that illustrates my way: I don't make images, I rather try to find nice, good, pleasant, images in the environment. So to speak, the images are already there, what I have to do is to find them.
Regards
AP
I really appreciate little email missives like this one from Antonio. The reasons for that are numerous but this email brings to mind a bit from Robert Adams' essay Making Art New;
"Why are important areas of life geting past us? Why, for example, do we have so few pictures of family life in America? ... The only thing that denies us these pictures is a lack of commitment to go out and get them - to be absurd... to be unable to explain, to endure our friends' pity ... to do it. 'Most expressive discoveries are made in old familiar subject matter," the art historian A. Hyatt Mayor wrote. "The really original artist does not try to find a substitute for boy meets girl, but creates an illusion that no boy ever met a girl before." Photography is by nature on intimate terms with old familiar subject matter; all that remains is for us to create new illusions in the service of truth."
The essay is from Adams' book, Beauty in Photography published by Aperture. The book is a short and sweet little read of 8 essays. It should be on your list of must-reads and it is available from my Shameless Commerce Division by clicking on the Photography Books link in the Nav column and then clicking through to Overstock.com.
Thanks Antonio. It's great to know that I connected with you in some way.
Reader Comments (3)
I read once, recently, that because of digital technology that historians have fewer and fewer letters and correspondence -- and I suppose photos -- from everyday modern living. One day, generations from now (if we make it that far), there will be few records of our modern lives. It's all 1's and 0's.
Huh. Maybe I don't understand Adams' point, but it seems to me there is MORE documentation of everyday life going on right now than ever before.
Maybe I'm silly but it just warms my heart to be able to see (and darn near smell) what somebody had for dinner in Lisbon, Portugal on one fine evening. Photography is great. And photography combined with the internet is wondrous! Thanks Antonio.