George and me and Maria and Donna Wynbrandt went to the Hyde Museum in Glens Falls, New York to see an exhibit of some of the photos by the famed photographer Ansel Adams, who loved George’s work and praised it enthusiastically. Adams is the photographer George most admires, and to whom his own work is most often compared.
Adams wrote of George’s photography: “George Forss gives us images of extraordinary vitality. He sees with an incisive eye and haunting spirit. I have seen no photographs in recent years as strong and as perceptive.” Like Adams, George has a brilliant master of the lost art of darkroom development and the technical aspects of photography – settings and exposure; digital photography has supplanted both. George always looks for magic, romance and emotion in his photography, I have always admired Adams work wonderful, but felt it a bit cold, sometimes even drab. I never feel that about George’s pictures.
Photographs were strictly forbidden in the Adams show and George and I both asked several times if we could take photos there and we were told firmly we could not. But the guards looked at our cameras and bags and I think they didn’t believe us, they shadowed us all afternoon like Secret Service agents, just daring us to pull out the camera. At one point, I opened my camera bag to get the camera ready when we left that gallery, and the two circled me, they were about to pounce. I did sneak off an Iphone shot, but not of Adams photographs. When we got to the rest of the exhibit we did take photos, and George and I were like two little kids chasing after the light and trying things, taking photos of one another taking photos of one another. I love taking photos with George, I learn so much just by watching him, we are blood brothers in so many ways.
George has been teaching me the spiritual side of photography, he calls it “Orenda,” a supernatural force believed by the Iroquois Indians to be present, in varying degrees, in all objects or or persons, it is believed to be the spiritual force by which human accomplishment is attained or accounted for. I like it, it made a deep impression on me, I think George would like me to slow down my photography a bit, think more about the photos I am taking. I love the idea of Orenda, I am thinking about it.
It was fascinating to watch George look at Adam’s photography and talk about the printing and lighting techniques he used, he understood them in a way I can hardly grasp and will never really need to know. More photos to come of this very special afternoon. More on Orenda later. After the gallery, we went out to lunch, then came to the farm where George and I took more photos. The kind of day that makes Maria and I appreciate our lives very much.