I can’t imagine a better photo instructor than George Forss who came to the farm yesterday to give me my second photo lesson, this one on composition. George has a busted ankle, which is healing nicely, so I picked him up at his gallery and brought him to the farm and deposited him in a chair near the headless statue.
George became obsessed with a crystal Maria found in the woods, we both had the same idea, we wanted to photograph it and catch the sunlight sparkling off of the prism. I put the crystal in an apple that just fell off of the tree and placed the apple on top of the headless statue in the back yard. We circled the apple for nearly an hour, adjusting the lenses (George’s are mostly home-made built out of glass and metal from garbage cans, he has studied optics for years).
I brought two chairs out and I mostly photographed George, I want a photographic record of this wonderful artists, the photos are precious to me. It was a warm day with a gentle breeze. Lenore and Red sat out with us, though George is not really an animal person. He stretched his cast straight out and started taking photos and so did I. Maria said I looked very happy. I was.
George is an intutive teacher, I mostly learn by watching him, he is a photographic genius, a master not only of composition but especially of settings and light, of exposure, shutter speed and aperture settings. He is constantly fiddling with the camera, putting it to his eye, adjusting the light, the ISO, watching the sun, the background. George can sometimes appear to be in his own world, and his own world is filled with aliens, mystical visions and memories, but when he has a camera to the eye, he is in a trance and he is clear and focused and laser-like.
I kept adjusting my exposure until I was able to catch the finest details of the crystal. George and I connect on a level I don’t always understand, I don’t talk easily to a lot of people, I’ve never been close to many friends or members of my family, but I feel totally at ease with this man, we just seem to speak the same language, we get each other.
George rarely talks about his early life, but he did yesterday, he talked about being taken away from his mother in the Bronx by city authorities who placed him in an orphanage until he was 17, and when he got out he was an agoraphobic for nearly seven years, his world was small and confined. One night, he went out and started taking photos in Central Park and slept by the wall one night and then woke up to a woman bearing messages from alien beings, and the messages changed his life, awakened his creativity, gave him faith.
George is visibly upset by my taking insulin objections, he urged me to not think of myself as a diabetic, to have faith that I could heal myself, to turn a way from injections and medications. Talk to yourself, he said, tell yourself you don’t have diabetes. George, I said, I did that for several years, but the diabetes didn’t agree, it just kept getting worse. He told me his beloved mother Norma, also a brilliant photographer, died of a diabetic coma. When George is upset, he tends to go to the alien world, he feels safe there and understood. I was touched that he was concerned for me, as I often am for him, he is a gentle and generous soul, as well as one of the few authentic genius creatives that I have known.
George fell and broke his ankle in two places, he was expecting to have surgery but the doctors say he won’t need it, another example of his healing himself, I have seen him do it before. George’s faith is inspiring, it is very real, I wish I had it.
We sat and talked in the sun for hours, taking scores of photos of this and that, exchanging settings and I learned so much from him, his two lessons have completely changed the way I take pictures. He thinks I am an emotional photographer, taking photos of things that touch my emotions, he is more technical, studying the composition carefully, setting up shots with great care as to light and aperture. At first George refused to take any money for the lesson, he said he didn’t do anything, but he certainly did, and I told him it was quite a bargain to have one of the most accomplished photographers in the world teach me how to use a camera for $30. I had to stuff the check into his pocket.
He said if I gave him a photo of myself when I was five years old, he would frame it and it would help cure me of the diabetes. I tried to reassure him that it was making me healthier, but he said the injections made him nervous. I don’t think I have a photograph of myself when I was five.
When it was time to go, we packed up our gear, his crutches and camera bag, and I drove him home, it was one of the sweetest afternoons I can remember, I had great fun, learned so much. How curious that George and I, aliens each in our own right, should end up in this small town, such good and close friends, such soulmates. Life is endlessly wonderful and mysterious, crisis and mystery always around the corner. We are doing another lesson next week.