“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”

- Hans Hofmann

I strive for simplicity in my photography, although I’m not exactly sure why. I might say that its an element of my photographic “style”, but that doesn’t explain “why”.  Its more than that.

Maybe its my brain trying to make sense of chaos.  Maybe my subconscious finds it easier to find balance and peace in simplicity.  Maybe it makes the artistic statement I want to make more obvious.  I have yet to answer this question, and likely never will.

What I do know is that for me simplicity as it relates to a photographic image is well defined in the quote from Hans Hoffman above.  In the cacophony that is the world, or merely in the scene that I find front of my lens, simplicity allows statements to be heard, objects to be seen, and messages to be understood.

© 2009 James A. Fraser