Ansel Adams in 1930 had been training to become a concert pianist while considering a career as a photographer. He decided, after seeing the photographs by Paul Strand, that "the camera, not the piano, would shape [his] destiny." His mother and aunt both pleaded, "Do not give up the piano! The camera cannot express the human soul!" To which Adams replied, "The camera cannot, but the photographer can." 1
The idea that the soul can be extracted and frozen onto film is not new and it is that process that imparts to photographs the power it has as a visual stimulus. We find perspective of people and moments in ways we missed and need to revisit. For images of ourselves we seek to find the dimensions we cannot possibly see without escaping our personal vantage and borrowing another's. Personal photographs can permit the subject to know about themselves and any viewer to also know elements of another.
But photographs speak and easily if we listen words seem to rise out of the images.
Une ame exposee - a soul exposed.
1 Ansel Adams, "Collector of Fine Photography," Black and White Magazine, October 2000, 76.
Ron Brewer, like most artists, has circled back around to his medium of expression throughout his life. He has had many professions that eventually let him back to viewing the camera as an eye for beauty.
As a child he began to photograph as many do after receiving a camera for Christmas but unlike many he chose instead to pose his sister and to dare some artful images. Decades later in 2005 as an adult he chanced to see a gift his supervisor received; a camera and two lens. Instantly he fell back into his childhood passion for creating artful images and acquired his own camera. He shot anything he could find but before long he focused on people.
What matured from this was a desire to capture not just people but the beauty they possess. Eventually this birthed a philosophy that more important then beauty that was obvious was beauty that was not obvious.
“My best days are the days when my subject cries after seeing their images for the first time. I want it to make a difference in their lives. I want them to see themselves differently.” - Ron Brewer
These two artist have collaborated seamlessly in their quest to capture and encapsulate beauty. It will become an enduring art form. Ame Meme represents a beauty found in each person but combined it represents the whole of humanity in a must greater quest to continue to see, revisit, and share beauty wherever it hides in us.
Ron Brewer owns Ron Brewer Images, located in Surprise, AZ (a Phoenix suburb).
Dr. Jean Robey is a practicing Nephrologist in Arizona. She was awarded a 6 year scholarship to study at Louisiana State University Medical Center when she was 15 years old but decided on her own to stay in high school one more year to “read books I might never get time to read”. She graduated then at 16 years old and was awarded the Flinn Scholarship and remained in Arizona to study. At the University of Arizona she completed her studies in 2 years but stayed to again embrace other interests in philosophy and dance. After her 4 years of growing, she was awarded the Dean's scholarship to attend the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center. She left Arizona for the Medical University of South Carolina initially dreaming of becoming a surgeon.
Mid way into her surgical training she decided that she valued the conversation and company of her patients too much to spend her days operating and hours away from her husband and any family she till then had dare not have. Once she was in the Internal Medicine program she decided quickly her passion was for the patients who suffered kidney disease and kidney failure.
That journey continues to be the center of her daily inspiration and connection to humanity. She writes daily and happened upon a wonderful happenstance that lead her to meet Ron Brewer.
As a photographed subject, she appreciated greatly Ron's soulful perspective of her beauty and began to be moved by his other images. She was so moved that words spilled out that celebrate those photographs and their subjects.
“I am forever thankful for the inspirations to write and for the subjects and photographer that yields them.” - Jean Robey