benhästen
I am a photographer.
I like lurchers.
horseofbone.com
maudkristina at gmail dot com
Photo by Jane Bown
“…she was still using her faithful Olympus because she was ‘supremely uninterested in photographic technology, accepting her camera’s limitations as imposing a necessary discipline on her image-making,’ as Germaine Greer has observed.
Most of her photographs were taken in sessions that lasted no more than 15 minutes. She had no props and turned up carrying only a shopping bag with her camera in it. Annie Leibovitz she wasn’t. Even exposure meters were shunned. ‘I just looked at the light on the back of my hand and judged it that way.’ Thus Bown perfected minimalist photography: the same camera, the same lens, the same setting, but no flash or exposure meter. In this way she was left free to concentrate on those eyes.
Her work for The Observer was mostly made up of last-minute assignments. ‘I’d be sent with a writer and had to take my photographs quickly so they could get on with the interview. In a typical month I might do Dennis Hopper at the Savoy, Woody Allen at the Dorchester, and a senior politician at his home. Each time, I’d have 10 minutes. So I would march straight in and take over the situation. I had a quick mind. I could suss it all out immediately.’”
Exposures: Jane Bown: 100 Portraits
