More Than a Rock, 2nd Edition

21Such Things Could Be

The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects. So that no one would say, how did you do it, where did you find it, but they would say that such things could be.

—Dorothea Lange

It is with some trepidation that I confess to feeling a little pinch inside each time someone responds to one of my images with the question “where is this?” It is a valid and understandable reaction, one I also experienced at times in my salad days, before coming to the recognition that there are much greater rewards in appreciating photographs intended as art for what they are about, rather than what they are of.

As a general statement, the images I make, at least those of the past decade or so, are not ...