Sam Abell's Signature Style

Sam Abell is one of the most inspiring photographers working today. His books, Stay This Moment and The Photographic Life, are some of the most cherished volumes in my collection.

Mark sent me an amazing article, written by a photojournalist at the Herald-Leader in Lexington, KY. The article pushes photographers to consider their own style. I love this quote from Sam:

"There's more to a photograph than graphics," Sam told me. "There's content — spiritual content, psychological, emotional and even editorial content. All of these things come from somewhere, and the place they come from is probably long-buried bedrock."

Here is an excerpt from the article:

How Sam Abell helped me to find my signature
By Janet Worne
HERALD-LEADER PHOTOGRAPHER

"The world was divided by an ever-present level line that splits the world equally -- above and below, near and far, known and unknown."

National Geographic photographer Sam Abell wrote that in his book Sam Abell: The Photographic Life. He was referring to the topography in Ohio where he grew up but also about his signature, a particular style of seeing or giving structure to the world. This signature -- the horizon line -- grew organically out of that childhood landscape. He wrote that this level line "is at the center of my seeing and gives to deeply different places a common ground."

I had heard him describe this the first time I saw him speak at the University of Kentucky more than 10 years ago, and I felt an instant kinship. Here was a real thinker, a spiritual photographer, someone who has difficulty separating his personal life from his work.

I have been accused of thinking too much. And it's true, I do. It drives me crazy sometimes. But here was a photographer whose work I had long admired, with a thoughtful, analytical approach to photography, and it showed in the depth of his work.

To a photographer who likes to think that a tree is not just a tree and a photograph is not just emulsion on paper, this was exciting stuff. It started me thinking about my own work. Did I have a signature? And if so, how do I find it?

So finally, after a decade of musing over this, I called and asked Sam to expound on his theory.

"Dedicated photographers invariably have it when they're photographing intuitively from within themselves over a long, long period of time," he said. "A style or compositional tendency, whatever you want to call it, will organically emerge from that devotion." But this can happen, he added, only when the photographer is able to work "without excessive supervision."

But how does a photographer go about finding it?

"My advice to people who are trying to discover this within themselves and within their work is get out your favorite photographs ... and earnestly confine yourself to those photographs that you love, and study them. I then urge people to think about their early life, particularly the geometry or the graphic of their home, their hometown, the landscape that they first knew and also the values that were represented to them in their early life."

Here is the link to the full article

Digital Journalist interview with Sam