Ruth Bernhard
[Photographer, b. 1905, Berlin, d. 2006, San Francisco.]
I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help.
My quest, through the magic of light and shadow, is to isolate, to simplify and to give emphasis to form with the greatest clarity. To indicate the ideal proportion, to reveal sculptural mass and the dominating spirit is my goal.
The ground we walk on, the plants and creatures, the clouds above constantly dissolving into new formations—each gift of nature possessing its own radiant energy, bound together by cosmic harmony.
I was completely uninhibited in my first photographic efforts. I had no notion of how a photograph should be made or should look, or that there were certain things that “couldn’t be done” or were absolutely
défendu. I did as I pleased, and I made pictures only of things that held my personal feelings.
Looking at everything as if for the first time reveals the commonplace to be utterly incredible. Each animate and inanimate part of the whole seems to exist in a tight network, interdependent and timeless. I consider a minute insect, a mountain range, and a human body of equal significance.
There is no such thing as taking too much time, because your soul is in that picture.
I make only one negative when photographing a nude or still life. The moment of exposure is the culmination of rejecting all other possibilities. It often takes me many hours to make a photograph.
My nudes are ideals of my own feelings about being a woman, not an expression of erotic power, or a love object.
