State of Mind... Recent Photographs
2007

In recent years I have used exquisite - but never local - mountains, streams and rocks as subjects for my photographs because I felt I was able to see their essence in addition to their incredible appearance. Then, about a year ago, I realized I wished to photograph even beyond the essence of a subject's beauty, to its finer aspect, something like its underlying nature or even its fragrance. I discovered the trees, plants, flowers and lagoons of my neighborhood in Florida and realized what is absolutely obvious - my subject can be found anywhere. The need is not for dramatic subject matter - it is for my awareness to be subtly, yet highly, attuned - to harmonize with the unseen, non-physical aspect of that which is in front of the camera.

I move in very close to what I am photographing, eliminating the horizon line, and then I respond to what I see. I don't actually do very much. I am alert and I wait, almost listening to the landscape. When I am in sync with the subject, the light and the atmosphere, the photograph can emerge at lightning speed. Later I will alter the image in Photoshop because something that doesn't happen in nature needs to be built into the finished photograph. I combine files, modify colors, adjust contrast and make other adjustments to further coax the recorded information into something with a presence and beauty that transcends the initial files.

Ultimately the image must become something unique; otherwise, as Henri Cartier Bresson has said, it goes to the trash.

Moving Pictures… Still Photography
Nancy Hellebrand, 2006

It is no longer "the thing itself" which inspires me to photograph. I began photographing in the 1960's, and now, after decades of working in photography, I have come to a more universal yearning. What was specific and narrowly focused has evolved into a spiritual thirst that is broad, deep and all embracing. I am moved by, and I long to touch that aspect of experience that is beneath vision, physical touch or descriptive language. I want to use a camera to photograph that which is beyond all we see. Photography becomes a spiritual practice, without needing a god or religion.

I still see myself as a somewhat traditional photographer even though I am now shooting and printing digitally. Digital technology has freed me from a narrow definition of the medium. I can take liberties with digitally captured information that were not possible previously. I can use content as raw material rather than as stated fact. I used to make a naturalistic description of what I saw, but that no longer interests me. Now I wish to abstract my material. Digital alteration of color changes an image so that it no longer illustrates the subject but becomes something new. And now too, there is the issue of motion. In the last decade I have photographed tree branches blowing in the wind, clouds, waves and mountain streams - only subjects that move. Often I didn't even know exactly what the camera saw (the subject moved between focusing and shooting). It was like intuition taking the picture. It gave me a freedom I hadn't experienced before. But now I am photographing rocks - and they don't move! I have had to learn to create a sense of movement through focus. I am trying to get a story from the rocks, to feel the movement of their being, not their surface.

Sensing my subject has overtaken physical looking. How wonderful to be fully engaged in a visual medium and have the technology to free myself from that which is seen! It's meditation in action. It's a connection to the felt rather than to the seen. This is the landscape I must inhabit and portray.

My History in Photography
2003

I began photographing in the early 1960’s during my first year of college. My passion for photography was equaled by my obsession with social injustice. Using a 35mm camera with black and white film, I photographed street people and the have-nots of wherever I lived and traveled. The photographers I admired were the great black and white photographers of the time: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Helen Levitt, Walker Evans, Robert Frank. In the mid-‘60’s I was working in New York City and took a photography course with Alexey Brodovitch. That single course forever trained me to deeply value my own authentic way of seeing and photographing. I soon moved to London and for three years studied privately with Bill Brandt. He strongly reinforced the training of Brodovitch and he affirmed for me the intrinsic value of art in the midst of worldwide suffering and pain.

During the 1970’s, while teaching the History of Photography, I deepened my appreciation of a wider spectrum of photographers, and was especially intrigued with the work of Alfred Stieglitz. I became obsessed with Stieglitz’s compositions and also the inferred potential he revealed in all his subject matter. With this awareness I stopped confining myself so strictly to social observation and for the first time I ventured beyond photographing people. One photograph I made of a windowsill in my parent’s bathroom created a new paradigm for me. It was beautiful because of the quality of the light and the atmosphere, not because of the content in the picture.  It was fascinating – and there was no inherent reason why.

Over the next 10 years I did different groups of photographs including extreme close-ups of faces and bodies. I focused on the in-between spaces, (under the arm, between the eye and cheek, small areas of the back, etc.). I wanted to emphasize that which is usually not noticed. It was a searching of another human being that seemed to create intense intimacy. I also was beginning to abstract aspects of the subject. Initially I printed this work in silver, but then moved on to platinum and palladium prints, in an effort to eliminate the conventional silver print appearance. A desire to be free of the look of traditional photographic prints in order to reinforce the abstraction of the subject matter is an approach which has remained constant since that time.

In the late 1980’s, when I was photographing handwriting, I began to manipulate and magnify subject matter even more. Focusing on handwriting was a way of finding that which is subtle and unselfconscious, yet highly expressive. I was using a 4 x 5” view camera, having steadily increased the size of my negatives in search of more intimacy and greater detail. There is a very close-up photograph I took of a note I wrote to myself which said, “Get the car.” The final version of the picture used the words as seen from the back of the paper. The words were highly magnified and displayed vertically. In the process the handwriting became illegible and much more poignant than the original written material. 

During a yearlong hiatus from photographing, begun during a meditation on the day of my 40^th birthday, I became interested in all things Asian -- especially meditation, tai chi and the fine arts of China and Japan. I ended this period of photographic quiet, (which was anything but quiet on the emotional front), by photographing different organic substances blotted onto tissues. The idea for this project came from a dinner party at my house when I noticed each of three Tibetan monks crumpling his paper napkin in a highly unique way. (The monks were raised in monasteries where napkins were not used.) I began by photographing their napkins, and then branched out to other substrates covered with different substances. The pictures were sometimes printed in yin/yang diptychs connecting positive and negative versions of the same image. It was at this time that I began to use a computer and make digital prints -- which finally yielded the large and non-photographic surface I had been after for years.

My first project in color (in 1994) was a series of photographs of a New Jersey beach at sunrise. The exquisite quality of dawn light on sand was a perfect beginning for my exploration of color. The prints were understated and almost monochromatic – but felt wildly, blatantly full of color to me. Camera-wise I had come full circle, from all manner of view cameras, back to a hand-held 35mm – in search of an ability to record in a more fluid and direct way.

In my more recent Wave pictures from 2001, I use the film’s rendition of color only as a base from which to search for less realistic colors. Usually I print the images quite large so the motion of rising water becomes abstracted and the realistic view deteriorates. Using the digital printer the color palette and subtleties are endless (and the prints are truly archival).

Finally I make pictures which no longer look like traditional photographs. The water, sky or other pictures convey a feeling of beauty very different from that of the subject matter. I have come to realize that my work is not limited to aesthetic inquiry. I have finally realized that my path as an artist is an integral part of my spiritual path. For a long while I thought it was one or the other: I could be an artist or I could devote myself to meditation and other narrowly defined spiritual pursuits. At last I realize that these are not two opposing drives. It’s all one. At last!