"... the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed-- love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and worst of all without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. . ."
William Faulkner, from his Nobel acceptance Speech, 1950

In his introduction to 'Classic Essays on Photography,' Alan Trachtenberg writes, "A common lament among photographers and their admirers is that the medium lacks a critical tradition, a tradition of serious writing. It is true that photography has seemed to inspire as much foolishness in words as banalities in pictures, and especially true that we cannot name a single writer of significance who has devoted himself or herself entirely to photographic criticism and theory."

Some claim that this is due to the nature of pictures, that somehow their own language prohibits adding anything to their nature in written language. There is, however, several great texts which talk about poetry and writing, some of the best include works by Annie Dillard and Jane Hirshfield. For students, I think this work can be imperative, if one substitutes the word photography here and there. So why are there no photography texts like these for students of the medium? No books attempting to explain an in to the process? I'm not sure. Chip Benson used to say something like, "You think and think and think about what it is you're trying to do, and then when you pick up the camera, you do your best to completely forget it." This is good, if vague, advice. And to be clear, Benson is purposely being vague. It's the best way to begin.

Several years ago, while I was teaching at a community college in Las Vegas, I had a beginning student insistent on every image including the same iconography: kittens in baskets. A strange choice, I felt, considering the options a city like Vegas provided. Again and again, I prodded her to look outside of her thoughts about "what pictures should look like," something she'd apparently gotten from years of seeing calendar photography.
I've nothing against it, and to tell you the truth, if someone could make a kittens in baskets picture that does IT, that speaks of the universal truths Faulkner is talking about, well, that would be just genius. But overcoming that laden iconography would take a great deal of skill, an enormous amout of skill, thought, and yes, the taking of images besides those of specifically that subject matter.
After several weeks of these photos, I banned her from kittens. And then she taught me a lesson about photography. It seems that photography is the ultimate democratic medium, that even the novice can pick up a camera, and once in a while have that 'angel' on their shoulder, waving magic wands and giving up the universe for just one tiny part of a second.
I'd been photographing Vegas for six years, working at every angle, at every moment not spent at work, and a few at work. I'd seen this great wall of concrete separating the interstate and north Las Vegas, a great grey wall 80 some feet tall and nearly a mile wide. It was astonishing, and perhaps more astonishing, were the folks who still lived in the neighborhood now shaded in its darkness, only getting light for a few hours a day, people who probably fought it and lost.
This particular student lived in one of the homes shadowed by the great wall, and when she was forced, by assignment, to walk outside her door to photograph, she made an image I'll never forget.
When I showed up for critique, there was a buzz around the image, because no matter what kind of dialogue for analysis one has developed, the most novice understands when they're seeing an image that speaks to universal truths.
I've been trying to track the student, and the image, without luck. So I'm forced to just tell you about the photograph, a photograph that made my years of hard work and film expense feel like something of a joke. There it was, hanging on the wall of a beginning photography class: the image that said IT, that said those things locals understand... those things universal but unseen in a city where boobies are the most photographed subject matter, even more than kittens in baskets in all the rest of the country.
It could have been taken for a grey day, until you looked close to see the lines indicating the concrete blocks. There was no end to it, no top or sides to the sky it presented behind two children standing over a large grate on a concrete floor. The kids were tiny by comparison, and both pondered what it was that might lay beneath that grate, one with a large PVC tube used to try to inspect just what it was that might lie beneath. That, my friends, is it. What we're trying to do with a camera, from both the angle of the photographer and from the angle of the child holding a four foot section of plastic pipe pointed to a hole in the ground.