Two quotes have shaped how I approach photography, and I’ve spent some time coming to terms with their import.
“Art is a wound turned into light.” — attributed to Georges Braque
“Vocation is the place where your greatest joy meets the world’s greatest need.” — a popular paraphrase of Frederick Buechner, from Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (1973)
Where I began
Photography has always been a counterpoint to my work. It let me step beyond the confines of an office, the grind of routine, and the politics of the workplace. It got me outside, physically and mentally, and asked me to pay full attention to what was in front of me. It became a place to breathe and to look.
At first, it was simply a break. Over time, it taught me to be present, and that presence became its own kind of light. Photography wasn’t about documenting my frustration; it was about stepping out of it to see the world again. I’ve come to believe that this kind of attention isn’t an escape from what life hands us. It’s a way of living with it.
What I came to understand
None of us can undo what we have done or what’s been done to us. Loss, injustice, and the small cruelties of ordinary life leave marks we cannot erase. We can choose what we make of them.
Photography offers one answer. It turns our attention outward, towards light, form, and the people and places around us, without asking us to deny what we carry. Our wounds shape how we see: what we notice, what moves us, what we linger over. In making images, we turn that private weight into something others can see and recognize. A photograph need not tell our story directly; it carries the sensibility our story has given us.
In this work, we act rather than merely endure, and acting restores something of our wholeness. Photography — literally “writing with light” — is a fitting place for a wound to become light.
What I have come to understand, Take Two – the Subject
“Art is a wound turned into light.” — attributed to Georges Braque
For years, I assumed that understanding others began with looking at myself first. That assumption led me to misinterpret this quote. The workshop had ended more than a year ago, yet I still didn’t get it.
I thought that if I understood my own battles and wounds, I could create a more authentic portrait of the person in front of my camera. In one of my final psychology classes, many years ago, the guiding idea was: If I understand me, I can understand thee. That idea did help me understand my sitters, to a degree. I was partly on the right track.
But in environmental portraiture, I’ve come to read Braque’s words differently. You’re not just photographing a face; you’re photographing a person within the place or context where their life unfolds. The wound that matters most in that moment isn’t the photographer’s. It’s the subject’s.
Everyone you meet and photograph is carrying something: a loss, a betrayal, a long disappointment, or worse. Recognizing this changes how you approach people. Talking with your subject before and throughout the session lets you walk a short distance in their shoes (and perhaps they in yours). That requires patience and mutual respect.
Approached this way, the subject stops being a prop and becomes a co-creator of the photograph. Perhaps that is where the light comes from.
Where it leads
This is where Buechner comes in. What began as something for myself has become something I can offer others. When what we make meets someone else’s need — to be seen, to remember, to notice beauty they had passed by — a private practice becomes a shared one. For me, that is where joy and need meet.
My thanks to model and stuntman David Burke.
Quotes to Consider/Inspire – (1) “A photograph is just a tiny slice of a subject. A piece of them in a moment. It seems presumptuous to think you can get more than that (Annie Leibovitz).” (2) “Every portrait is a war between the sitter’s vanity and the photographer’s guile (‘Photographing People: The War in Every Portrait,’ Sean Tucker).”
Listening to – Kacey Musgrave’s ‘Too Good to Be True,’ Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Tougher than the Rest,’ Bruce Hornsby & the Range’s ‘Mandolin Rain,’ and Motorhead’s rendition of Bowie’s ‘Heroes.’
