Larry Fink - On Composition and Improvisation
From the Bookshelf: Ian Wright ARPS Without accompanying images, a photographic book review may be informative to a point – but the essence is missing. I’m therefore very grateful to Larry Fink for giving permission to include a selection of his images and to use direct quotations from On Composition and Improvisation (Aperture, 2014). This review has turned into a broader introduction to Larry Fink’s photographic work – a career stretching almost 60 years. I suspect he is not as well known in the UK as he deserves to be – he was not in the RPS Documentary Group list of resources and books until I recently added references – and I hope this overview helps to correct that. He is an interesting, idiosyncratic, and engaging character – a teacher and thinker, a driven, emotional, and complicated individual, ‘pathologically curious’, an idealist who ‘once had hope but now has fortitude’. His brutal honesty about his own conflictions and contradictions is as clear as his undoubted talent, (evident even as an untutored 18 year-old) and his arresting, magnetic, images. The irony of the ultimate ‘outsider’ receiving photographic awards, and celebrity status, is not lost on the photographer himself. Widely acclaimed in the twenty-first century, his photography divides opinion but I’m inclined to share one forthright reviewer’s opinion: ‘if you can’t appreciate Larry Fink’s photography, it would be best for all concerned if you sold your photography equipment and took up playing the piano ... The foundational mindset, the nugget of artistic spark, the compassion for all humanity, required to understand the true purpose of all this infernal shutter clicking is missing from your soul’. I’ve tried to structure this article as a resource but mostly to let the photographer speak directly to the reader – the images are the essential starting point. Some biographical background provides context and selected extracts of Larry Fink’s text in On Composition and Improvisation give a flavour of his thought processes. Finally, some snippets from the most revealing interview I can find. Of course, this short article cannot do full justice to his body of work or his philosophy, but hopefully something will catch the reader’s attention to provoke further interest. 82
