The Group f/64 movement is a huge personal influence. Seeing photographs from the members of the f/64 group immediately awakened my interest in photography and drove me to my first camera purchase, and eventually to a view camera and darkroom. The intense, sharp reality and lack of artistic pretentions in the photographs presented to me a vision that I could become emotionally involved in.
The Group f/64 movement was a direct reaction to Pictorialism which had infested photography with it's high brow artistic pretentions with blurred images, brush strokes added to photos and the feeling that photography could never be like painting. Pictorialism seemed like an expression by individuals who were frustrated painters dabbling in another artistic medium that I do not even think they thought of as really artistic, photography. Their attempts seemed artificial and superficial and even arrogant to the point of calling themselves "artists". The f/64 's mission was summed up perfectly by Edward Weston. "The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh." The photograph should be a perfectly sharp instrument to display the real natural and human life resulting in attempts to achieve the ultimate depth of field, thus the name f/64. That sharp reality can reveal more of what human life is and even more of what is hidden. The natural world can be presented also in a sharp reality conveying the beautiful and the brutality in such a realistic vision, that any attempts to soften the impact result in a creative and artistic fraud. The contours, texture, curves and intrusions must be recorded in the sharpest manner to achieve the fullest expression of creative and emotional visions. That is why glossy papers were used instead of mat paper.
I remember the critics of Ansel Adams exhibitions proclaiming his prints were bordering on boredom and the critic did not have the imagination, character nor the emotional capability to sense the purpose of this creative vision. The sharp reality bares the soul of humanity and the natural environment around us. The critic was looking for artistic tricks in the photograph to point out how artistically aware he is. His simple vanity excludes any comprehension beyond this undeveloped attitude. Surrealism and the Group f/64 movement were drawn more alike in their visions to destroy the blur of fancy artistic expressions which hide the real reality. The emotional response from viewing the depictions of sharp reality provide the real and limitless response and reactions. There are certainly more then one way to view this sharp reality which offers an unlimited number of responses dependent on the personality, character and morality of the viewer.
Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Brett Weston are the most famous of the photographers within the f/64 group and seeing Brett and Edward Weston's prints in exhibition and is what drove me into photography.