After reading the responses to Andy Piper's post about HCB's "People of Moscow" book I got to thinking about who influenced me early on.

For what it is worth his "Hyeres" and "Behind Gare St.Lazare" shots are two of the pictures that hooked me about 25 years ago. I saw these and understood what is possible with a small camera. There are others of course, Kertesz, Strand, Model..., but HC-B's work to me has always been inspiring.

That is to say, his work has inpired me to do good work, not to become slavish to anyone else's particular style. Manuel Alvarez Bravo said that many photographers shoot with someone else's eyes. It's sad that some never learn to see for themselves.

-- jeff voorhes (debontekou@yahoo.com), March 15, 2002

Answers

No need to drop names here. The simple answer is, my dad. If it wasn't for him allowing his 5th grade son to sneak off with his pentax then who knows?

-- Brooks (Bvonarx@comcast.net), March 15, 2002.

I started snapping twenty years or so ago (alack) after seeing HCB's portraits collection. The next best thing I saw was Geoffrey Coniffe's Common Ground. Then Mary Ellen Mark "Falkland Road" and most recently Luc Delahaye's Winterreise. Witkin - an unexampled genius, IMO.

Chomsky, Illich, Kuhn, Wittgenstein (second), Feyerabend and Said have also been very useful to me over the years. Along with Huck Finn, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird and Tolstoy. Must be some others... Oh yes, LOTR. Then we have: The Man who fell to earth, The Godfather Trilogy, The Apu Trilogy, and Point Break (not really...!). Traffic, Way of the Gun. Liquid Sky. The Thin Red Line, Day of the Dead. It goes on and on.

-- rob (rob@robertappleby.com), March 15, 2002.

Sorry, mustn't forget "The White Fence". The photograph. No- one will ever make a picture as perfect and powerful as that again.

-- rob (rob@robertappleby.com), March 15, 2002.

Fred Truslow's pioneering wildlife photos in the 1960s, Ernst Haas' use of color, Elliot Porter's exquisitely detailed scenics, David Cavagnaro's macros, among others.

-- Douglas Herr (telyt@earthlink.net), March 15, 2002.

As a youngster I just wanted to take pictures; I had no influences.

Now I'm older and I still just like to take pictures. But now my influence is my large body of photographs that I keep trying to improve upon...especially the ones that I look at and say, "What the Hell was I thinking of there?" :)

-- MikeP (Mike996@optonline.net), March 15, 2002.

Ralph Gibson, Jeanloup Seiff, Edward Weston as well as Picasso, Monet, Jack Kerouac and Robert Frank, the diaries of Anis Nin.

-- Bob Todrick (bobtodrick@yahoo.com), March 15, 2002.

Writers who are image-oriented inspire me. Burroughs, Ballard, Carroll. Photographers - Bravo, his student Iturbide, Meatyard, Laughlin. I don't "shoot with their eyes" but I have done homages to them.

Princess, for Graciela Iturbide, Copyright 1999 Jeff Spirer

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), March 15, 2002.

Jeff - Meatyard, you've got me there. Great name, but I could never feel the photos were any good visually, whatever the surrealist message.

-- rob (rob@robertappleby.com), March 15, 2002.

Landscapes: Josef, David and Marc Muench; Galen Rowell. Wildlife: Art Wolfe, George Lepp and "Nick" Nichols. Birds: Arthur Morris and George Lepp. Macro: John Shaw. Using a Leica for something other than boring shots of unattractive people doing mundane things (sorry, I hope HCB lives to 150 but I'll never appreciate his photography): Brian Bower.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), March 15, 2002.

Jeff - fine image.

-- Steve Jones (stephenjjones@btopenworld.com), March 15, 2002.

Jeff Spirer-

I believe you've posted the "Princess, for Graciella Iturbide" image before. If I didn't compliment your work then, allow me to do so now. Nice work.

-- jeff voorhees (debontekou@yahoo.com), March 15, 2002.

W. Eugene Smith and Life.

-- Glenn Travis (leicaddict@hotmail.com), March 15, 2002.

Glenn-

Minimata.

-- jeff (debontekou@yahoo.com), March 15, 2002.

Rob - If we all liked the same things, it wouldn't be fun, would it? But what Meatyard showed me was that one could photograph childhood as something more than "sentimental" or "cute." What I remember from childhood are the strange things - being in an attic alone and feeling like there were ghosts, those kinds of things. And that's exactly what Meatyard photographed, and it made me feel like I could do that and show it. And I've done quite a few like that, although not the one above.

Thanks for the comments on "Princess." It really is a cop from Iturbide, if you look at her Aperture book it becomes apparent quickly.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), March 15, 2002.

Huger Foote, Andre Kertesz, David Douglas Duncan, Robert Capa, Alfred Eisenstadt, Sal DiMarco, Mary Ellen Mark, Diane Arbus, Marc Riboud, and Stanley Kubrick :) (hehehe)

-- Alfie Wang (leica_phile@hotmail.com), March 15, 2002.

Lee Miller, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Jill Freeman and Nick Drake.

-- Ralph Rognstad Jr. (oakhill00@earthlink.net), March 15, 2002.

I forgot the poet Theodore Roethke.

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go.

-- Ralph Rognstad Jr. (oakhill00@earthlink.net), March 16, 2002.

By the way, Bravo has a new book of nudes out, some of it images that I hadn't seen (and I have tons of books and have seen his stuff in numerous museums.)

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), March 16, 2002.

HCB, Einstadt, Sebastiao Salgado, Castaneda.

-- edgaddi (edgaddi@msn.com), March 16, 2002.

I've got to agree with Jeff Spirer on Meatyard's work. What a Minds' Eye"! My only lament about his unique photograpy is that I've never had the pleasure of seeing it in person. Only in books. As far as influences, all of the greats cast their spell on me. Doisneau appealed to my sense of humor. Lartigue inspired me to make every day family pictures more interesting. Bresson taught a very impetious young me that paticence has it's rewards. Duane Michals influenced my ability to tell a story . Brant and Arnold sharpened my graphic design. Kertesz on through painters like Hockney and writers like Kundera. As a young man I skipped buying camera gear and paint brushes ( even food ) to buy some of the work I admired. Ironically, just one of those "investments" in what I loved, later paid for an entire Leica system. But I still miss that print. --- Marc Williams

-- Marc Williams (mwilliams111313MI@comcast.com), March 16, 2002.

Gene Smith. When I first saw his work, everything about it made so much visual sense to me I got addicted. After him, Cartier Bresson, and Danny Lyons.

-- Michael Darnton (mdarnton@hotmail.com), March 16, 2002.

William Henry Fox Talbot,Julia Margaret Cameron,Eugene Atget, Bill Brandt,Pierre Verger,Don McCullin,Abbas,Gilles Peress, William Klein,Josef Koudelka,Robert Frank,Bruce Davidson, Rene Burri,Raghubir Singh,Gordon Parks And Anonymous.

-- richard b (rubyvalentine@earthlink.net), March 16, 2002.

Early on? Beethoven, Weston, Ali Akbar Khan, Hesse. Now I influence myself.

My wife is the historian for Carmel, where Weston used to live and work. She just opened a new Weston exhibit, with pictures from private collections that have never been seen before in public. I didn't even go. The death of hero worship is the birth of one's own soul.

-- Peter Hughes (ravenart@pacbell.net), March 16, 2002.

Eisenstadt, Salgado, HCB, Capa, George Rodger (who i met in 93), Anton Corbijn, Paul Strand, Mapplethorpe, Freddie Young & David Lean

-- Philip Woodcock (phil@pushbar.demon.co.uk), March 16, 2002.

Originally: HCB, Gene Smith, Larry Burrows, Philip Jones-Griffiths Now: James Natchwey, Don McCullin, Dave Harvey

I also have a soft spot for the work of Pete Turner and Jay Meisel. And it was David Hemmings' character in the movie "Blowup" that promted me to turn pro :-/ Oh, the shameful secrets we carry...

-- Paul Chefurka (paul@chefurka.com), March 16, 2002.

I am impressed that literature--fiction, poetry, creative non- fiction, has been a major influence on a lot of you. So it has been with me.

Chekhov, Raymond Carver, Henry Miller, James Joyce, George Orwell, I know have all influenced me as a street photographer. Also John Donne, Emily Dickinson, Yeats, Roethke, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Alan Ginsberg, whose poems often pass through my mind when I am deeply at work. Paul Cezanne has been my most important influence in terms of visual structure. The photographers I love include H C B (of course), Salgado, Steiglitz, Aget, Weegee, Eugene Smith, and a host of others.

My most important influence was my friend Roger, who I lost track of many years ago. I did not even own a camera when we were working together at the Japanese university. He insisted that I blow my first bonus on an SLR. Roger was from Nebraska. I visited him in Nebraska once and saw his major black and white work. This included people shots with a Soviet era Horizont. It was stunning; absolutely stunning. Roger, like myself, was a literary man.

Leica photography is something I fell into when wishing to shoot quietly at conferences. My first Leica was a IIIf, bought at K & S in Palo Alto and met my other major influence, Paul, who is a Leica M photographer of great talent.

In Japan, Mr. Kato, a painter, first took my photography seriously when I was using slides to teach him English and arranged for a one person show. He also introduced me to Mr. Shibata who gave me direction. Photograph people, he insisted. I was doing everything: flowers, landscapes, people. But he told me I was best at doing people.

-- Alex Shishin (shishin@pp.iij4-u.or.jp), March 16, 2002.

Satyajit Ray, Ali Akbar Khan, Raghubir Singh, Mr. Kato. And that's about all the non-Westerners in this long list.

Very impressive how self-sufficient and inward looking this Western Civilization is in this supposed age of globalization...

Either that or artists from the 5 billion odd people in other non- Western cultures are

a) few or largely non-existent

b) hopelessly marginal, incompetent and feeble in their work

c) mysteriously silent

d)dismissed reflexively by Westerners

e)economically disadvantaged in their reach to an unbelievable degree or

f) oppressed and silenced by as yet unknown means and mechanisms.

I can't think of any other possibilities, can you?

-- Mani Sitaraman (bindumani@pacific.net.sg), March 16, 2002.

Robert Frank, Josef Koudelka, Sabastiao Salgado; HCB; Raghubir Singh and especially Edward Hopper the New England painter whose art conveyed a mood I still try to capture.

-- ray tai (razerx@netvigator.com), March 16, 2002.

Mani, while I understand your disappointment I think there are a couple of mundane reasons you've overlooked. The first is that an artist from one's own culture is more likely to couch their works in an idiom that is more accessible to you. The second is that it's easier for western photographers to get book and distribution contracts with western companies due to simple proximity. No books, no familiarity. No familiarity, no influence.

You can legitimately ask why western publishing companies don't go out of their way to discover and promote more non-western photographers, but my bet is that it's simple inertia - if they have all the material they need readily to hand, there's little incentivre to go further afield looking for more.

-- Paul Chefurka (paul@chefurka.com), March 17, 2002.

Mani, I agree completely with Paul. In the photography section of Any town, Any state in the US what will you find today? Ansel Adams, HCB, Anne Lebowitz, William Wegman, Linda McCartney, Dennis Hopper, Richard Gere, Karsh, Helmut Newton, Mapplethorpe, Weegee and your Rolling Stone cover collection. At least that was what I found last time I was in Green Apple, Cody's, BarnsNoble, etc in the Bay Area, and I found the same titles here in Hong Kong last week. But here I also find books by local photographers though they are local interests only will never make their way to Amazon.com.

-- ray tai (razerx@netvigator.com), March 17, 2002.

Lao Tsu, Sun Tzu, Li Bai, Wan Wei, Zhen Ban Qiao, Frederick Engels, Pan Tian Shou, Edward Weston,Alfred Eisenstaedt, Freeman Patterson Ralph Gibson

-- martin tai (martin.tai@capcanada.com), March 17, 2002.

And that's about all the non-Westerners in this long list.

Bravo and Iturbide, while they do live in the Western hemisphere, are hardly "western" in their cultural outlook. Otherwise I agree with you, but in terms of influences, most non-western photographers weren't being shown here they way they should have been. I only recently discovered Daido Moriyama, for instance, I don't think he his work has been easily viewable in the US until recently, and have been extraordinarily impressed by his work. He would probably have been an influence at some point, had I known about him.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), March 17, 2002.

Paul, that is a good point. Proximity is still an important issue, and globalization is less of a pervasive state than we would be led to believe from newspaper reports.

By the same token, one might complain that newspapers in India and China use only local talent.

Not withstanding that, I think there is a certain reluctance, not particular to any group, to take an active and serious interest in non-western talent, or more precisely, to be stimulated or be excited by novelty outside of the culture. Maybe this is an art patron thing, or maybe a publisher thing, or maybe the audience. An Andreas Gursky, with a pedigree from Berlin and London will cause a stir. Somebody with a resume that speaks of Mumbai, Shanghai or Lagos is not going to create anything of a buzz. While it is hard to pin a racism label on such a phenomenon, the 'reluctance/preference reflex' (if I can call it that) is driven more by ethnic factors, rather than purely artistic or aesthetic ones.

And I would go further, as to say that this kind of "reflex" is not universal to all cultures. Believe me, a Cartier Bresson or a Eugene Atget exhibition will cause huge interest or at least stimulate considerable curiousity amongst people with interest in matters artistic or cultural in a non-Western city.

Overall, I agree with the innocuous explanation, but with the reservation that it explains only part of what is going on...

Jeff, you are very correct in removing Iturbide and Bravo from that list. Their influences and aesthetic are so very clearly indigenous to the Indian cultures of Mexico.

-- Mani Sitaraman (bindumani@pacific.net.sg), March 17, 2002.

Bold begone?

-- Mani Sitaraman (bindumani@pacific.net.sg), March 17, 2002.