Design Feast Series: Quotes

“I was always a big fan of Francis Bacon’s paintings, and much more of Robert Frank’s later work, his collage and how he’d do things with Polaroids. …

I love photography, and I love where it takes you, but there’s got to be something else here.

So, I started researching and looking around. I started going out and seeing more of painting exhibitions, because I felt photography was just becoming a little bit stale and no one knew where to go.

When I went to a painting exhibition of the old artists and you saw how they looked at light, I wanted that light more than I wanted the light of somebody else who was a photographer because I understood it more. That painter spent hours making that one little piece of light. Just that subtle gradation of light bringing you right to what he wants you to look at in the picture and then you look back into the shadows. I saw that more in paintings than I did in photography. And since I couldn’t really do that, I started doing more journals and keeping journals.

It was more writing at the beginning. And then I would start using more scattered ink pens and gluing things into the book. And, all of a sudden, I went through this whole thing where they were very, very overly done and now I’m back to the point where they’ve became much more simplified. …

It was completely done with that whole irreverence, in the sense, I don’t care if you like my collage work or not. I don’t do it for you, I do it for myself.”

Frank W. Ockenfels, Photographer