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This month's pact.

Assignment #1

due April 30^th

Quality of Light. 28 pictures.

There is no aspect of photography more influential than quality of light. A piece of trash will invariably become a work of sculpture after being photographed on the sill of a north-facing window.

Walker Evans created your memories of the Great Depression by waiting for a light that would look like the past. Robert Frank used an overcast sky to make Americans appear shady. Roy DeCarava discovered that the dim light of Harlem tenements could describe his neighbors' warm souls and cold struggle. Robert Adams broke the spell of Ansel Adams' sublime American West by showing us that the light there doesn't shine there as brightly as it once did. And Eugene Atget soon became the greatest of all photographers after he discovered it was best to get up early in the morning to photograph Paris. He made one picture every day.

In this assignment you are free to photograph wherever and whatever you want. Your only restriction is that you capture quality of light so amazing that it becomes the driving aesthetic force behind each of your pictures. I want pictures which are great because their quality of light is great. Master the capture of quality of light and people will think you are a master of photography. And maybe you are.

You will notice two things as you work. First, that quality of light determines every photograph’s character, and second, that everything is a work of art after being photographed on the sill of a north-facing window. I’m telling you this now because I do not want to hear any excuses of the first variety, that is, that your picture is about quality of light when really, it isn’t, and because I do not want to see you fulfill the requirements of this assignment by window-light alone:

You are to make 28 pictures with 28 different qualities of light. Trust me when I tell you that you will not do well on this assignment unless you carry your camera around with you all the time—like Evans, Frank, DeCarava, Adams, and Atget all did.

Best of luck.

And don't forget your camera.

8

A bag for bread.

7

I think I will stick to black and white.