These days, it’s popular for artists to say they’re “inspired” by other artists rather than “influenced” by them. After all, being inspired by others to create allows the artist to maintain more of a claim to personal vision. But to say you were influenced is admitting someone else had a hand in rendering a part of that vision.
When I first got interested in photography, there was no internet to learn from. Books and magazines were my teachers. I’d look at them over and over again.
I recently opened up an old copy of the Color volume of the Life Library of Photography series of books. I haven’t looked through those pages for nearly 30 years. But some of the images must have really made an impression when I was a kid; they seemed instantly familiar to me, like I’d seen them just yesterday.
Looking at them, I realized that as you young kid, I must have been profoundly influenced by the photographers who created them, as well as countless others in several books and magazines. I have several volumes of the book series, and here are only two of the images that I’m sure have somehow left an indelible imprint in my mind, and helped shape my own sense of what a beautiful photograph is.
Photo by: Evelyn Hofer, Portrait in Windowlight, 1969
Photo by: Jay Maisel, Nude, 1965 (imperfect scan)
