Note: we like the work of Lisa Prince-Fishler (princeli@Optonline.net). We like her work so much that we gave her the cover space for issue 3, when we were still in paper. Lisa's website is http://www.printzphotography.com.
JoS: Who influenced you?
Lisa: My Mother is one of the people who's influenced me greatly. She is Japanese, and an artist. She is who taught me the most about respecting Nature and animals... She always tells me that all the most important lessons we have to learn, can be found in Nature. That all the answers are there.
Jos: What about photographers and artists?
Lisa:
It's funny, if you're asking me specifically about my photographs, I
can honestly say, I'm influenced by no one photographer. My camera
just enables me to capture things, as I see them. Is this learned?
Asides from the technical, my way of seeing is not learned. I feel so
totally congruent with my "self" when doing this... I am
doing, what I am. Nothing is forced, learned, etc. No outside
influences.
There is a concept, however, that drives me...
The word "Yugen" in Japanese. It means, "beauty tinged
with sadness... ie., the beauty of impermanence..." This is
something I think of often.
I love the sculptures of Isamu
Noguchi, Andrew Goldsworthy, (to name a couple) and paintings by
Yuumi Domoto, Miro, Pollock, etc., however. I am not that
knowledgeable about photographers, though someone recently introduced
me to Elliott Erwitt and his dog photography!
JoS: You said you photograph what you see. Say more about that. Lots of artists say it and I never understood it.
Lisa: Well we all have a different way of seeing, don't we? Things we draw our eyes to, focus our attention on. I see beauty in things that some people just pass by, without noticing. Beauty in the mundane. Beauty in sadness. An interesting composition made up of a dew drop, a blade of grass, and a small fragment of an abandoned spider's web..... a leaf, decomposing and going back to the earth... a minute brown spider, on a dried brown pumpkin spiral... a pine cone on a cold morning... pattern languages in nature... or the soulful personality of a pit bull terrier.
JoS: Impermanence is a very Buddhist concept. Wasn't your grandfather a Shinto Priest?
Lisa: That was my great great grandfather, Mizutame Beishitsu. My grandfather was very spiritual and an artist too... he gave his daughters Confucian, Buddhist and Shinto names.
JoS: What camera or cameras do you use?
Lisa: I use a Canon 5D and Canon 40D, both digital SLR's with about 7 different lenses. :-)
JoS: What are their most important features for you? (for example, 10 megapixels?)
Lisa: I like sharp, fast lenses... which is a lens with a large aperture, ie., 1.4 or even larger... This gives you a very shallow depth of field, when you want it, so you can have the subject in focus and, beautifully blur out everything else. I also prefer fixed focal length prime lenses to zooms.
JoS: Thank you.
Lisa: You are welcome.
Copyright 2009 Journal of Sustainability