When I was growing-up in California, it was in the wide open spaces of home that I found peace within myself. The Santa Clara Valley back then was still the community of orchards, farms, and fields as was written in Steinbeck's novels. You could go out and pick apples, peaches, strawberries, cherries, pay a few dollars and go home with a whole crate of fruit and vegetables. It was in part because of the richness of the colors and the beauty of the world I remember that I ended up falling in love with the photographic medium. One of my favorite memories growing up was a single field off of what is now Old Hostetter Road in San Jose. Every day, when my dad drove us down this road, we would pass this field of green and gold which was dotted with the songs and colors of the red-wing blackbird. From between the grasses I spied these small creatures, the red flash on their wings flaming against the almost iridescent obsidian of their feathers. And in a moment, the air would be filled with the swirling cloud of black and red. It's a beauty that's now extinct, like the orchards and the farms, paved over by the industry that now makes up what is better known as Silicon Valley.
Moments of pure beauty. They are often the simplest things, the things we take for granted every day of our lives. We hardly think of them then, but when we look back they are like lost relics, ancient stories and memories. They are the lost pieces of our lives. My photography is in part to capture fragments of these lost moments. The home of my soul has been and will always be nature. For as long as I live, nature will be my home. The trees swaying in the wind, the valleys dotted by the colors of autumn, the waves lapping upon the shores, to the deer, elk, or birds that pause for a moments notice upon hills of green or snow. It is in the splendour of our world, the world unchanged by the hands of humans that my soul calls home.
But beauty is by no means limited to nature or the few wilds left in our world. There is something truly inspirational about people, about dreams, about hopes. I see these things in people every day, back when I was student, back when I helped student at Harvard University, and when I worked in the private sector. There's a real passion, a fire that pushes us forward reaching and often searching for things we can't quite quantify or explain. It's the honesty of a moment. It's the love of life.
My love of photography started in nature. And it is in nature that my passion for the single moments of beauty found its art. It is the beauty of the solemn honesty moment that will soon pass and never come again. Some moments can be captured. Most should not- it is in living and enjoying the moment that we find our greatest fulfillment. I think realizing which is which is one of the hardest lessons of all. And only when you understand, do you know exactly what it is you are seeing and aim on capturing through the lens.
It is important to always respect what you see through the viewfinder. Often these days, photography has become an industry about the money or prestige. It has lost sight of the beauty that exists in all of us, in the world around us. The tragedy that befalls us is a human failing, and one that is decided upon by choice by the individual holding the camera. Fortunately, those who would violate the sanctity of respect are in the minority, but it is those individuals, disguised as human beings, who unfortunately from time to time leave the undeserved smudges on photography as a whole. As individuals, each of us has choices to make about what it is we hold of value. We choose who we are and are responsible for what we do.
And so when I photograph, that is what I try to capture- not simply an image of something, but the manifestation of everything beautiful that touches the very fiber of the soul. Anyone can take photographs. You don't need a fancy camera, or particular subjects to do that. We take pictures on vacations, at family gatherings, etc. You can go out onto the web and see that true for yourself. But for me, there is a little point doing that. I take photographs because it is those singular moments of beauty that make the experience wonderful. And I take photographs to share that beauty with others so that others may hopefully choose to experience that beauty for themselves one day.
I recommend people see in concert any of the performers I've photographed. They are unique individuals as much for their music, as for the passion and honest beauty that is who they are. It is an incredible manifestation of sound and voice that simply has to be experienced. But in the end, as images, they are all but individual moments in time, like the red-wing blackbirds that once were, but will never be again.
Albert Wang 4/23/02
Equipment used:
Conventional 35mm Camera:
Body: Canon EOS-1, Canon EOS A2
Lenses: Sigma 70-210 1:2.8 APO, Canon EF 75-300 1:4-5.6 IS, Canon EF 22-55 1:4-5.6
Digital Camera:
Nikon Coolpix 995