Artist’s Statement

As a photographer, whether I am shooting landscapes or people, I have to be in love with what I see. If I’m not moved, then I strongly feel it will reflect in the image. If I can capture a moment and even one other person sees what I saw in the photograph, then it was a successful effort.

When shooting landscapes, it is hard to find places that have not been manipulated by humans, so the spaces where it looks as if there was an attempt to accentuate what the land had to offer - in the same way, the sculptor frees the icon or angel from the block of marble - are my preference. Overly contrived spaces seem too artificial, like an image that has been too heavily edited to the point of looking surreal. It's not perfection that moves me, it’s contrast, warmth and drama that I am after. There are very few perfect lines in nature and our attempts to create them are more times than not, thwarted.

Truly beautiful places are, to me, are attempts at a partnership between the land and nature and the gardeners and architects who have a vision of how this relationship between their work and nature will evolve over time. These activities need to be thought of as relationships because as with all things, if only the short term is considered, then it will fail. It is only when considering the long view, with the knowledge that all things need tending and maintenance to survive, that they blossom into something amazing.

What I capture are specific moments in those relationships - the partially sagging fence around the garden that next year will yet be even lower to the ground, or the tree on its slow path up and eventually down. The value in capturing that specific moment is based on what Roland Barthes said of photography as an art:

“The camera captures mechanically that which cannot be captured existentially.”

The image is fact, not an interpretation of fact and those specific moments will never come again. All of this is the result of trying to adhere to a piece of advice written down for me in 1987 by DeWitt Hanes when she was 88. On a notecard placed inside a copy of Sonnets From The Portuguese that she gave me that I keep on my desk, she wrote:

“Bo - Stay in love all of your life - birds - flowers - trees - mountains - seas of the world and most importantly, a woman who loves you. All My Love, Aunt DeWitt.”

Indeed, Aunt DeWitt, I am in love with it all, and I intend to capture as much of as I can.

Cheers,

Bo