Caponigro was a poet among photographers. One who made images that evoked the senses by the way his images had such a depth of texture that there was movement in there captured stillness. And, the essence of the thing was never lost – whether it was plant life, a piece of fruit or a rugged landscape. He was a master of capturing what the hearts feels in outward form.

I ‘met’ Caponigro when he came highly recommended to me by the photojournalism professor at UWEC my freshman year there. David Hansen had seen a write up of me in the local paper around high school graduation time, contacted me, and told me to stop by his office sometime in the photojournalism lab on campus. So I did. I got a tour of the lab, met the students, and chatted with Hansen about a myriad of things. He hooked me up with some Velvia slide film, told me to go shoot as much as I could, and gave me a B&W photo book on Paul Caponigro to look at. With Paul and I, it was love at first sight, and I promptly searched all used book outlets for a copy of this Aperture Monograph.

Every quote in the book about the art and craft and visceral experience of photography resonates with so many of my favorite artists and philosophers – Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Deborah J. Haynes, Bresson, Rothko, Klee. Here are a few about discipline, feeling and intuition:

“Who has the time today, really the time, to grow, to unfold, and develop in an activity or even to contemplate properly what other are doing? Life ought to be lived more like harmonious music. The pressure of hastening things, of skimming superficially, only destroys that sense of music in life.”

“Work incessantly, cultivate discrimination, gather freedom from your own hard-earned results. Disregard successes but go back to them for help in an immediate problem. The possibility of discovery is everywhere. Freedom from your own work allows for intuition that draws from all your experience and perception but goes beyond it.”