"For me, photographing people is always about emotions—a certain gesture, a turn of the head or body, a laugh."
Magazine
Winter/Spring 2002
Photo
by Buck Miller
Someone you'd like to meet
by Buck Miller
In 1975, I was a photographer with
the Milwaukee Journal when Georgia O’Keefe came to the city
at the invitation of Peg Bradley, who owned the largest collection of O’Keefe’s
work outside of Wisconsin. I photographed the artist at the Milwaukee Art
Center. A reporter and I were the only ones allowed in the room. When the
reporter pulled out his camera, O’Keefe asked him what he was doing.
He said, “I’d like to have a record shot for my files.”
O’Keefe gave him a firm “No.”
“That’s what the photographer is here for.”
We talked about Stieglitz and his work, how slow photographic films were
then but how he still managed to capture someone’s personality. She
asked me how I’d know when I “had” the photo of her I wanted.
I said, “When I’m in the darkroom printing, I’ll look for
the shot that says to me, “this is her.”
She smiled and the photo session was over.
If someone looks at one of my photographs and says “I’d like to
meet that person,” I feel I’ve accomplished something. For me,
photographing people is always about emotions—a certain gesture, a
turn of the head or body, a laugh.
Buck Miller is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated photographer whose work has
appeared in Wabash Magazine since 1995 and has shaped numerous other
College publications.
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