LittlePurpleCow Productions

“Meet John Loengard and make his image.” I wrote a number of weeks ago in my little black journal. It felt so far-fetched. Meet and photograph the photographer I admire most? It was quite silly, actually. Who am I to dare dream it? I had no connection to him, only his book of famous photographs at the side of my bed and a strong desire to know the man with the vision to see these images.

So I filled out a contact form… which lead to an email exchange… followed by a snowstorm… and a cancelled flight to Laguarda… that sent me on a delayed flight without my luggage… which lead to a series of phone calls and a sequence of subway rides... and one deep step into a puddle of slush on the upper West side… that landed my wet boots and fluttering heart at the foot of John Loengard’s open door. And there he stood. The man I dared dream to meet.

I wish I had words to express how it felt to sit with him at his dining room table. To soak in the reality of his presence and to bear witness to his prints of the Beatles and Georgia O’Keeffe leaning casually against the wall. I wish I could show you what it was like to look deeply into his eyes and hear him wonder “why anyone on earth would want to be a photographer.”

We talked about making images, and technology, and patience, and people, and the power of peculiar moments. I heard myself fumbling unrehearsed phrases about my passion for photography and watched him gently nod his head and look at me in a way that I knew he understood. “I know the fascination,” he said lifting his brow, making me feel so much less alone.

And then he pulled up his chair beside me to look at my images and share his thoughts. And within minutes, he sliced through the clutter of subjects and settings and showed me that elusive, peculiar moment in two of my own images – a dog standing on the edge of a sofa and a young boy posing for a photograph in a paper crown. And that’s when it just clicked. I knew everything he needed to say to me without a word, because we could just see it. That elusive, peculiar moment. The one that attracts me to his masterful images again and again. The one I dare to seek.