Sunday Edition: Lowe and Winston
PHOTOSNACK #144
Every Sunday, I reach out to photographers previously featured on PHOTOSNACK and ask them to send me their spontaneous thoughts, observations, reflections, or advice.
Today, I am sharing with you the messages I received from Jack Lowe and David Lorenz Winston.
This is a free preview version of PHOTOSNACK Sunday Edition. Please consider supporting my work (and getting all future Sunday Editions!) as a paid subscriber.
Jack Lowe
Dear Tomasz,
Consider it a postcard from the train:
I’m writing to you from the train to London, ready for the Press Preview and Private View for Women of the RNLI tomorrow.
I’ve been thinking about your request for what I might be currently thinking when preparing for an exhibition.
This is certainly a prestigious and exciting occasion, something I’ve essentially worked towards since childhood (I got into photography around 8/9 years old and lifeboats a year or two later).
However, my innermost thoughts may come as a surprise because, quite frankly, I never expected life to be quite like this when one achieves the glory of such an exhibition somewhere as incredible as The National Maritime Museum.
However, while working on and talking about my project, I feel unable to shy away from the world’s woes, from the economic and climate crises to the unfolding world war, all of which are symptoms of ecological overshoot - interconnected predicaments within what one might call ‘the meta crisis.’
This has had a deep impact on independent artists like me trying to earn a living. Life isn’t what it was, and it’s very tricky to navigate. To suggest otherwise is gaslighting in the extreme, and I find that exhausting in itself - when people try to gee you along as if everything’s tickety-boo.
Last night, I sent a newsletter to my patrons (members of The LSP Society), which closed with these words:
The print acquisition by Royal Museums Greenwich was not only an honor but a lifeline, too.
Once the exhibition is up and running, I'd dearly love to plan more coastal missions - as I'm sure you would too - but I can only do that if I can improve the financial picture.
Fingers crossed that good things come from the exhibition and that I can rejuvenate those vintage days once again.
So, in essence, I’ve put so much into The Lifeboat Station Project over the last decade or so, and this exhibition feels like a final roll of the dice in an effort to keep the project and any semblance of financial stability alive!
The newsletter was, in part, introducing a public blog post which I also published yesterday and should also be read in context with a post I wrote in July 2022.
So there you go, my innermost thoughts in this moment right here, right now, as my wife and I power through the countryside at 125mph.
We’re so excited about the exhibition, but there sure is a lurking flip side.
Keep well and keep on keepin’ on,
Jack
Jack Lowe was featured in PHOTOSNACK #127.
David Lorenz Winston
Three relevant elements in my work are design, relationship, and emotion.
For me, successful design is all about simplicity, making sure there are no extraneous objects, including busy backgrounds, that compete with the main subject. Also, the relationship is important to my work. A well-seen object by itself doesn't interest me as much as relationships between objects. Often, the relationships are between subjects that somehow, surprisingly, work together.
Emotion is an element that is hard to describe. I might say that I feel my images as much if not more, than I think them. This is something that for me developed over time and has to do with freeing myself from other's rules and instructions and listening with more confidence to my own instincts.
One additional element, so essential to me, is getting out to photograph often.
David Lorenz Winston was featured in PHOTOSNACK #124.
Sunday Editions are here to connect you with photographers whose work you previously explored through PHOTOSNACK.
I want to reveal some authentic parts of the people behind the cameras.
I don’t ask them any specific questions. I ask them to share whatever pops into their mind when thinking about YOU - the readers of this newsletter.
It makes their responses genuine and personal.
I hope you enjoyed today’s Sunday Edition.
Until next time,
Tomasz
Very interesting -and different -responses from Lowe and Winston; thank you for including both. They show the diversity of our instinct, compulsion or desire to capture what we see and to share it, as well as our different attitudes of the form and function of photography in doing so. Photography as a tool or an art, very different but relevant and satisfying raisons d’être. A wonderful Sunday to you.