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Miracle Of Flowers
Harold Feinstein's Approach To Floral Photography Isn't A Technical One—It's A Spiritual Journey Toward Stronger "Seeing"
By Mark Edward Harris
Photography By Harold Feinstein
Harold Feinstein's black-and-white study of Coney Island is considered a modern-day classic. He was part of the Photo League in New York when he began photographing in the mid-'40s. Edward Steichen brought his "street" photography into the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection.
Now, at age 70, this master of the camera and the traditional darkroom sits before a Mac G3 with an Epson scanner and printer nearby. Has modern technology brought Harold Feinstein a long way from home, or closer to the source of his creative inspiration? What has the world come to? His new book, One Hundred Flowers (Bulfinch Press), with wonderful introductions by A.D. Coleman and Sydney Eddison, and botanical notes by Greg Piotrowski, sheds some answers.
PCPhoto: Why flowers as a subject?
Harold Feinstein: Most of my photographic life has been 35mm black-and-white people—standard Life Magazine stuff. But about 20 years ago, I began doing flowers. For me, a flower is a spiritual messenger.
PCPhoto: In what sense?
Feinstein: The pure wonder of them. My work begins as a personal voyage. I'm not able to meditate for more than two minutes, but I can sit in front of a computer screen with a flower for hours and hours and work on it petal by petal, toning it and so forth. Each flower is inherently different and beautiful. I want to devote the rest of my life to creating an archive of not only flowers, but all horticulture. I'd like to do with flora what Audubon did for birds.
PCPhoto: What initially brought a traditional master photographer and printer such as yourself into the digital world?
Feinstein: I became involved with digital for several reasons. One was to archive my photography. I've been photographing for 55 years, so I have an incredible amount of work. The other reason was that a part of my portfolio is montage, and with digital imaging you can do much more, with far more precise control, than in a darkroom.
Also, I had never done any color printing. Now I can do all the work I want with a digital color print in much the same way I used to be able to do black-and-white in the darkroom. And even with black-and-white images, I can now produce a better print digitally than I could in a darkroom.
I don't get into the darkroom anymore. I used to love it, but I don't miss washing trays and getting prints flattened. Instead, when I wake up in the morning, I rush to the computer. Of course, there have always been "gremlins" in the process of photography. With the computer, there are many more gremlins at work, so I remember to save immediately, and I store everything on CDs at the end of the day. My work is important enough to me to make the diligence and effort worthwhile.
PCPhoto: How are you outputting your images?
Feinstein: I've been using Epson's heavyweight archival papers with its 2024 and 1280 printers and archival inks. I've also had some larger work done for me by Tim Daley as Iris Giclée prints—they're in galleries all over the world. Now I'm longing to use Epson's larger 44-inch and 24-inch printers.
PCPhoto: How did you photograph the flowers in your book?
Feinstein: I have an 8x10 view camera with a digital back, which I connect directly to a Macintosh. Most of my composition is done on the computer screen. Sometimes, I'll use a film back and scan the film. Occasionally, I'll work with an 11x14 camera. I laid the flowers down on a black background and lit them with tungsten lights and long exposures.
What's happened with the technology since I started with digital in 1994 is amazing. I used to have Cibachromes and dye-transfer prints made of my work, which cost hundreds of dollars. I find the prints I get now with my Epson printers are the best I've ever had. They're archival now, too, which is a big step forward. The non-archival quality of traditional color processes was one of the most difficult problems to deal with in color photography. You'd create these beautiful objects, but you couldn't sell them.
Now museums and galleries are beginning to accept color work because of the archival capabilities of some digital prints. There's still reluctance, but I'm working to help change that. There's always a resistance to any new method. The fact of the matter is I can get a better print digitally than I can in a silver print.
PCPhoto: How did you learn to use the computer?
Feinstein: I'm considered a master of technique, but I can't read an instruction booklet to save my life. I used to teach master classes in printing, and all my instructions were in the form of cartoons that showed the way I print instead of explaining it in words. Sometimes, I read manuals on printing and I can't understand what they're talking about. Many technical books on digital work seem to be written by people from Mars—every third word is a three-letter abbreviation.
I met a young fellow named Lou Strano, and we bartered. He taught me to use Photoshop. I let him know that I wasn't interested in learning everything about computers and that all I wanted was to know how to make beautiful pictures with the machinery. I didn't want any extra information because I have very little RAM in my head. All of my RAM is in my eyes and in my heart.
Basically, in Photoshop, I know A, B and part of C. When I show my work at trade shows, the people who write the books come up to me and ask me how I do it. It's relatively simple. In my teaching, I say, When your mouth drops open, click the shutter! You can give a hundred formulas or philosophies about design, but the truth is good composition is strong seeing.
That one moment that moves you—get in touch with that and let your reflexes work with it and trust it. My primary technique is prayer. For example, before I work, I feel gratitude for the beautiful flowers and the eyes I have to see them with. When people ask me to explain my approach, I could say, Well, I do this, I do that.... But the fact of the matter is, to me, it's still a miracle.
When I look at a flower, I think, How can that flower be? You can read a book about science, but it still doesn't get to the miracle of it. So my work, in a sense, is a prayer of gratitude and appreciation for what isn't explained.
PCPhoto: Your book shows page after page of flowers with magnificent designs and incredible gradations of color. Are those compositions the result of what you call "strong seeing"?
Feinstein: The thing that's wonderful about photography, in general, is that as much as we see at first, something happens in the process that gets us to see even more. My work reveals to me not only what I see, but the way I see.
Do what you love to do. That's the key to excellent work. And don't be talked out of it. People claim to be practical when they advise children. Even after my work was in the Museum of Modern Art, my mother would say, "Harold, it's very nice, but can't you do it on weekends?" She wanted me to be in business. To make money.
My father wanted me to go into the meat business—his business. He said, "Harold, remember one thing: You can't eat a photograph." It's ironic; now I don't eat meat.
PCPhoto: Did you find there was still some resistance to the idea of photography as "art" when your work was brought into the Museum of Modern Art by Edward Steichen?
Feinstein: Absolutely. That was the big question: Is photography an art form? There were only a few places that showed photography back then. In New York, it was the Museum of Modern Art and Limelight Gallery. At that point, I sold prints for $10 to $25. Now the prints are going for $1,200 to $3,600.
PCPhoto: How does teaching complement your work as a photographer?
Feinstein: Teaching is an important part of my life. I conduct workshops right here in my studio in Merrimac, Massachusetts, and I also teach in Watertown, Massachusetts. Let's face it, photography is easy. We like to complicate things. The thing I find in teaching—everybody thinks they have technical problems, but the real problem is the attitude that one has toward one's self.
There's such a self-deprecation that many people feel, perhaps because of a lack of recognition as children and so forth, that they don't believe in what they can do. They can look at other people's work and call it wonderful, but when they look at their own, they're looking at every pimple on their subject's face. Getting people to trust themselves is the key to teaching.
I believe that we teach what we most have to learn, and I find one of the gifts of time and age is that I trust myself much more. Now I can stand outside of my work and watch the miracles occur, allowing them in without judgment.
For more on Harold Feinstein and his work, visit his Website at www.haroldfeinstein.com.
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