The search for foo-ness

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Several years ago I saw a copy of Larry Fink’s photograph “In Moses Soyer’s Studio” at the Portland
Art Museum.  I was mesmerized. I was dazzled. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.
My wife nearly had to drag me out of the gallery. Why? Sure, it’s a beautifully crafted print.
Sure, it’s a well composed image. Sure, it’s a photograph of a pretty girl (always a plus.)
But it also has some other quality, a “foo-ness”*, that I could see but could not and cannot define
— a quality that I want for my own photographs — at least some of them.

I began a search through every book of photographs in our house (a lot) and through my own
photographs looking for other photographs that had some of the same mysterious quality —
my hope being to zero in on what it was — to infer the general from the specific.
I found a few photographs by my heroes — and even a few of my own photographs —
that showed various levels of foo-ness.
I am beginning to understand what it isn’t and to vaguely understand what it is.

~

* Foo-ness?

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