Photography is not easy. You know it takes a painter or a sculpture or a musician years to perfect their technique. Then they're free to make an expression in a matter of moments. It takes moments for a photographer to perfect his technique. And then it takes years for him to make it into something that is truly creative and worthwhile.
Paul CaponigroI work to attain a 'state of heart', a gentle space offering inspirational substance that could purify one's vision. Photography, like music, must be born in the unmanifest world of spirit.
Paul CaponigroPhotography is a medium, a language, through which I might come to experience directly, live more closely with, the interaction between myself and nature.
Paul CaponigroAs far as my experience goes one is automatically in touch with the higher spiritual, it is connected to a certain level that interpenetrates our total physical and psychic existence. We are always in touch with it.
Paul CaponigroI often see the materials of photography as being a type of terrain. Emulsions, liquid developers, silver salts, and fixers interact, and I construct a landscape that I need to first explore in my mind's eye if I am to make it manifest as an artful image in silver.
Paul CaponigroThe only way a work of art can become great is for one to acknowledge that it doesn't belong to anybody. The greatness is in constantly giving back, coming to an acknowledgment of the source. Look back to the source of any individual, any process, any set of materials. If the individual personality can relinquish its insistence on concepts like this is mine, I did it, this is original, nobody else has done it, it goes straight for greatness or the essential spirit.
Paul Caponigro