Collection spotlights photojournalist Ed Kashi’s ‘spontaneous “uncomposition”’

 Via NPAA

June 25, 2022

Taking pictures by intuition sounds mystical. How can you make photographs without thinking about composition, focus and adjusting the exposure?

Maybe after enough missteps — the back-focused portrait, an underexposed face, the wrong choice of lens — you can make the right decisions without thinking about them. Think of musicians who learn to adjust for a wrong note and a basketball player who seems to know where the ball is going before the pass is made.

Some photojournalists learn the same kind of automatic reaction. Ed Kashi is one of them.

He calls his new collection of 40 years of photography “Abandoned Moments,” a term he describes as moments “shaped by serendipity and instinct, rather than objectivity and intellect.” Released from the formality and training that direct most of the work of a creative soul, Kashi feels that with less control over his photography his images “may be more certain and more certainly true.”

In his search for truth, Kashi found himself observing life and reacting in a split second, finding serendipity and shaping it.

View Ed Kashi's fine art prints here. Signed copies of "Abandoned Moments" are available from the Gallery.