gee hurkmans

Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication

~ Leonardo da Vinci

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Years ago I saw a documentary about the famous American photographer Minor White. His work is fascinating, but what struck me most was how he prepared himself for a shoot in the field. Sitting on a stone, contemplating the scene, breathing in the scene as it were, sometimes even with his eyes closed. And he could be sitting there for half an hour or more, without even having touched his camera. And then he would find some other stone with a different perspective to contemplate and meditate some more. He wasn’t looking for a composition, he was just observing, with an open mind, not expecting anything, without any preconceived idea. The composition would find him (or not). That is photography.

John Daido Loori, a Buddhist monk and photographer, attended one of Minor White’s workshops. In his book The Zen of Creativity he writes about his experiences. White sends his students into the field with the following assignment:

Venture into the landscape without expectations. Let your subject find you. When you approach it, you will feel resonance, a sense of recognition. […] Sit with your subject and wait for your presence to be acknowledged. Don’t try to make a photograph, but let your intuition indicate the right moment to release the shutter. If, after you’ve made an exposure, you feel a sense of completion, bow and let go of the subject and your connection to it.

Minor White was influenced by Eastern philosophy and with his unorthodox way of teaching he became a sort of guru of Zen Buddhist photography, in which there is no separation between photographer and subject, the object and subject are one in a non-dualistic way.

The making of a photograph is sometimes compared with the writing of a haiku. Both are moments of increased awareness which allows the artist to “see beyond seeing”, to see the unusual in the usual, with an eye for detail, observing the world as it is, no more and no less. If there is anything like “Zen photography”, it has this meditative attitude to start with. In Zen philosophy the artist has a modest, non-dualistic role, like Minor White’s student who thanks his object for taking the photograph.

One of the core principles of Zen (and Taoist, its precursor) philosophy is minimalism, and this minimalism resonates in my photography. I find inspiration in the Japanese aesthetics of Ma (what is commonly known as “negative space”, although I would prefer the term “positive space”), Wabi-Sabi (the beauty of imperfection and transience), and Yugen (mysterious and dark). People are absent. A small - and futile, I fear - antidote against the billions of selfies.

I also keep my gallery modest, adding maybe 5 or 10 images a year and removing the same amount.

Gee Hurkmans

Dedemsvaart, August 2023

“When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs.

When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.”

~ Ansel Adams