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November 23, 2009
In this interview at Bombsite, that I mentioned in this earlier post on junk for code Tod Papageorge says that in the early days of his photography career in New York during the 1960s he photographed everyday:
I had a rent-controlled apartment on 96th Street. I was married. My wife and I lived on something like $3,000 a year. And I had a darkroom in my apartment...It was the ideal life: I worked every day and never thought about the health insurance I didn’t have
Papageorge says that he would meet up with Garry Winogrand at 11am or so, they would then shoot for a few hours, and end up hanging out at the MoMA café.
I find that interesting, as shooting everyday is not something that I do. My photography is much more intermittent, even though I am working on different projects.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, shed+bike, Old Dadswell Town, Victoria, 2009
I kept on wondering about the everyday bit. Would shooting everyday be one way to define the difference between a professional photographer and an amateur one? How could you take photos during a heatwave? Or even during an Adelaide summer?
Photography is limited to early morning and early evening at these times because of the harshness of the light. The window of opportunity is very short. But shooting everyday is one way to define what being serious about photography is. You are actually working on it consistently.
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