W.M. Hunt

 oo’s & iii’s*: an unusual and unexpected melange, mess, miscellany, mishmash, and mix of inspired selections from the photography collections of W.M. Hunt. *<pronounced ohz and eyes>

Catalogue essay for Fotofestiwal, Lodz PL, August 2020

Inspiration comes in many forms.

I’ve been attracted to very spare — minimal — abstract photographic works lately.  Photographs can supply a great deal of information with very little information.  Like evidence, photos report on what things look like. 

But I especially like images that withhold something, that don’t give me all the information;  I want to respond to an artist’s intention by fulfilling or completing the image with my own imagination.  A great example of this is Randy West’s “Rabbit Bird” which is so basic as to be no more than a line making a circle, and yet for me, it suggests a face or the cosmos or more, even a circle.  It has infinite possibilities.  

Robert Doisneau, the great 20th Century French photographer makes a statement that translates as “you must let the person looking at the photograph go some of the way to finishing it.  You should offer them a seed that will grow and open up their minds.”

This exhibition has a long winded but funny title, “oo’s & iii’s*: an unusual and unexpected melange, mess, miscellany, mishmash, and mix of inspired selections from the photography collections of W.M. Hunt. * <pronounced ohz and eyes>”.  It is meant light heartedly.

My intention is to entertain, to present a very disparate group of pictures, chosen because they have round things or rows of stick-like lines in them — oo’s and iii’s.  The only thing they have in common is that I was attracted to them and collected them.  

Here is another quote for you, also in French, from Antoine de Saint-Exupery from his “Le Petit Prince”, “Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.”.  From “The Little Prince”: “Here is my secret.  It is very simple.  It is only with the heart that one can see; what is essential is invisible to the  eyes.”