Page 26 - BSAM 2018 Q1

Book Review
IN TRAINING
Are they meditations?
24 | BCI | January/February/March 2018
By Stephen Voss
Hardcover, 80 pages. English. Publisher: Stephen Voss Photography; 1st Edition (June 24, 2016)
ISBN-10: 0692585168 ISBN-13: 978-0692585160
Facing page, top right;
Figure 2
Stephen Voss photographing in the National Bonsai and Penjing museum in the soft light he feels optimal for photographing trees
Bottom;
Figure 3
Picea Abies “Pumila”/Norway Spruce In training since 2002.
Comments on In Training by Stephen Voss
By Michael Collins McIntyre, Canada Images courtesy Stephen Voss
Awonderful and evocative book of bonsai photographs has captured the praise and imagination of world- renowned bonsai artists: Ryan Neil, Bjorn Bjorholm, Harry Harrington and Michael Hagedorn, for example. e book, In Training by Stephen Voss, features wonder- fully nuanced studies of bonsai from the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum in Washington D.C. Stephen is not, himself, a bonsai artist although he is quite emphatically a great artist. Although few of us may recognize Stephen’s name, a great many of us are likely familiar with his work even before encountering In Training. Stephen is a consum- mately talented artist whose photography regularly appears in publica- tions such as the Wall street Journal, Smithsonian, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, Wired, and the New York Times Magazine. Stephen’s work has appeared on the cover of Time. His portraits include Henry Kissinger, Michelle and Barrack Obama, Desmond Tutu, and Bill Gates. His portrait of Mikhail Gorbachev was captured in a session—presented on Stephen’s website—in which a remark of Stephen’s made the author of perestroika and glasnost, in essence, laugh unabashedly. A seldom-seen dimension of Gorbachev was revealed. Stephen’s portraits capture facial expression and posture in ways that portray the spirit; the ine able qualities that truly reveal the essence of his subjects. It is this artistic gi of capturing essences that also illuminates and distinguishes In Training. is gi is the common thread woven through the fabric of his art that elevates Stephen’s photography—whether editorial or of bonsai—to a level of true distinction.
e elaboration of this gi into In Training has unfolded slowly and with a dramatic ourish or two. Stephen did not set out to be a photog- rapher. He was a computer science major. A passion for photography followed upon his partner and now wife’s suggestion that he take a course in black and white photography and darkroom techniques that she had taken previously. Charlene’s suggestion took hold. It also turns out that Stephen and Charlene are walkers. Quite a number of years ago, a walk took them from an inner-city neighborhood through the gates of the National Arboretum to the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum. e contrast between the con ned and thoroughly urban, and the openness and verdancy inside the walls, heightened the experience. Stephen remarked “Its discovery and our rst walk through it was, in a sense,