Ask the Author: Tom Ang
Answered Questions (6)
Tom Ang
It takes no genius to come up with the idea of writing a history of photography (My 'Photography - the definitive visual history'. (By the way, the word 'definitive' is sales-department speak; it's not a word I would ever wish to burden any of my writing or thinking with.) While the world is not short of histories of photography, it does not need another book that trots out the same culprits while ignoring contributions from technology, from parts of the world that are not Europe and North America. And I wanted to offer a book that was sound on the cameras, lenses and processes that are often passed over by art historians whose knowledge do not extend to bits of metal and glass. (See, for example, a respected art historian refer to the Leica range-finder as the first SLR camera.)
Tom Ang
It's not particularly helpful, I'm sorry but I'm with the artist Chuck Close who said that inspiration is for amateurs - the rest of us just show up and get to work. I'm also with the Pablo Picasso who said that inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.
Tom Ang
Ask me what I'm not working on!
There's a portrait project in the planning, envisioning stage. There are a two or three novels that occasionally get moved off the back burner for a bit of stirring. A long-standing, 'urgent' need is a book on photographic ethics: a few thousand words of that is in the system. And for the last few years I've felt the need to tackle the concept of similarity, or why small differences make big differences. Plus two volumes of poetry: one's complete, the other is half-a-dozen poems short of completion.
There's a portrait project in the planning, envisioning stage. There are a two or three novels that occasionally get moved off the back burner for a bit of stirring. A long-standing, 'urgent' need is a book on photographic ethics: a few thousand words of that is in the system. And for the last few years I've felt the need to tackle the concept of similarity, or why small differences make big differences. Plus two volumes of poetry: one's complete, the other is half-a-dozen poems short of completion.
Tom Ang
Listen to the music of the words. Let me tell you a story. When I worked on magazine, we were sometimes short of readers' letters to publish. So we'd make them up. One of us editors would take turns each month. The trick was to write a letter than an ordinary reader would. And the test was whether one editor could spot the fake letters written by the other editor. Neither of us could do it! The other could always spot something written by another professional. And was because the rhythm, the pulse ... something would always give it away.
So: I advise you to listen to you words; do not merely write them.
So: I advise you to listen to you words; do not merely write them.
Tom Ang
Even when I had an academic job, with some of the most flexible hours known to society, I found it hard to live to timetable, deal with internecine fighting and working with unevolved human beings. As a writer, I work only with those I choose to, when I choose to, and work as hard or soft as I choose.
Tom Ang
I go for a swim. Am very blessed to be within 10 minutes' drive of a lovely sheltered bay in Auckland. Even if it's too rough, or cold, or the tide's out, scrabbling my toes in the sand and listening to the waves will always clear my head, and connect to deeper consciousness.
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