Wynn Bullock
[Photographer, b. 1902, Chicago, Illinois, d. 1975, Monterey, California.]

 I love the medium of photography, for with its unique realism it gives me the power to go beyond conventional ways of seeing and understanding and say, “This is real, too.” 
 Everything went together perfectly, and this is what I mean by knowing. I didn’t have to analyze anything. I just recognized what was in front of me. All I had to do was set up and take the picture. 
 A person is quite different from a tree or rock or stream. By introducing the nude into my pictures, I started perceiving all the things I was photographing in new ways. In contrast or opposition to each other, things became much more significant and interesting, revealing many more qualities than I had ever dreamed of knowing and expressing. By using the nude, I stopped thinking in terms of objects. I was seeing things, instead, as dynamic events, unique in their own beings yet also related and existing together within a universal context of energy and change. 
 At forty-two, I decided to become a photographer because it offered a means of creative thought and action. I didn't rationalize this, I just felt it intuitively and followed my intuition, which I have never regretted. 
 As I became aware that all things have unique spatial and temporal qualities which visually define and relate them, I began to perceive the things I was photographing not as objects but as events. Working to develop my skills of perceiving and symbolizing these event qualities, I discovered the principle of opposites. When, for example, I photographed the smooth, luminous body of a woman behind a dirty cobwebbed window, I found that the qualities of each event were enhanced and the universal forces which they manifested were more powerfully evoked. 
 Searching is everything—going beyond what you know. And the test of the search is really in the things themselves, the things you seek to understand. What is important is not what you think about them, but how they enlarge you. 
 When I photograph, what I’m really doing is seeking answers to things. 
 I didn’t want to tell the tree or weed what it was. I wanted it to tell me something and through me express its meaning in nature. 
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