Steve Kahn
Fine Art Photography
Stasis 1973 (select spreads)
Click on image below for slideshow and captions.
After a couple of years as a street photographer and editorial shooter, playing out the influences of Walker Evans, Bill Brandt, Robert Frank, Ralph Gibson, et al, I stopped making images entirely for about six months. When I again picked up the camera, it wasn't to look through it, but to set it on self-timer at a slow shutter speed, and throw it into the air - to free myself from habit of "seeing-photographs" - seeing what I recognized as images. I thought I'd let the camera record an event over time -- an event of which I established the limits. In that formal arena, subjective activity would play out its scripts. Perhaps I could learn from the experience.
From this work I published a duotone monograph of 22 images of a blurred reality. This marked my departure from traditional photographic concerns.