Arno Rafael Minkkinen
[Photographer, b. 1945, Helsinki, Finland, lives in Andover, Massachusetts.]
I think photography piles up the limitations more than any other medium I know… To outwit the calamities, I have learned to formulate a partnership with spontaneity.
Artists who believe they control everything control what they know. Artists who allow outside forces to intervene are like canoes going down rapids.
What happens inside your mind can happen inside a camera! (Slogan for Minolta, written by Minkkinen when worked as an advertising copywriter)
Only the camera knows what happened.
Be the caretaker of your vision. Make it famous. And above all, remember, that art is risk made visible.
What the camera sees at the moment of exposure is what I try to envision in my mind. Therein lies the magic of photography for me. It’s why it is always Christmas in my darkroom.
Contemporary photography has little patience with theories of art that cannot accept our wrinkles, imperfections, and unruly pubic hairs.
What to do? It’s simple: Stay on the bus. Stay on the fucking bus.