How the art of Japanese ink painting influences my photography

a different way to see the world

source: wikipedia

For photographers, the work of fellow photographers is the most obvious source of inspiration. But there’s so much we can take from other art forms to expand our view of the world.

The art of Japanese ink painting (sumi-e) has been a great source of inspiration for me for years now. Some of the most beautiful art pieces I’ve ever seen were created in this art form.

A concept sumi-e relies heavily on is Ma, or what we call negative space. The piece above, Pine Trees Screen by Hasegawa Tohaku, illustrates this concept brilliantly. This painting blew my mind at a time when I was just starting my journey in black and white photography: it showed me that there was another way to see the world, one more subtle, one of suggestion, filled with imagination.

Sumi-e is all about capturing the essence of our subjects and leaving everything else out. It’s about creating an emotion by simplifying the world and letting the viewer engage with the piece using their own imagination. It’s about using negative space (Ma) to create relationships not only between the elements in the image but also between them and the “empty” space.

Back when I discovered sumi-e, most of the visual arts I’d been exposed to relied heavily on capturing the world with as much detail and color as possible. Ink painting showed me there was another way. I embraced those principles since. They opened my eyes and let me see the familiar, the mundane, in a brand new way to me.

I have a video where I go deeper into the art of ink painting, you can watch it here:

If you’d like to learn more about sumi-e, I recommend these two books: Sumi-e, The Art of Japanese Ink Painting and Japanese Ink Painting, the Art of Sumi-e.

life update

After years of a semi-nomadic life, moving across countries and even continents every few months, we’ve settled down — temporarily, but still. We moved to San Francisco!

I hope to do things I haven’t been able to in the last few years, like engaging more with the local photography community, volunteering, showing my work around here, and giving workshops.

I still have a lot of exploring to do around my new neighborhood (Outer Richmond), but I can already see there will plenty of photographic opportunities. Including the fish in the Golden Gate Park ponds!

That’s all for today. Talk to you soon!

Adrian