John Szarkowski, in his work, Looking at Photographs, 100 Pictures from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, said of a photo by Frederick H. Evans, “While another photographer might with equal reason have seen the cathedrals as stone constructions, Evans saw them as light and space… elements in a structure of light.” It seems to me your work contains the same qualities.

For any photographer light is a major element. Over the years I have learned to use light and have its meaning be useful in the picture. On occasion, light becomes the subject, or at least a major player. Not that I spend a great deal of time scheming those things. If you go out, most early evenings, anywhere in the world where the sun is shining, the light is fantastic. The shadows are longer, and you have this axial light, which strikes things.

Windows and Thangkas
(Ladakh, India, 1994)
BY Linda Connor

The last picture in my book, Odyssey, is one of a dark, small room that has the sun right in the window. I did the picture with a certain amount of spite because I wanted to make the picture and the light was impossible. I decided to waste a piece of film so I could remember it, and it turns out to be one of the best pictures I have ever made — and its only because printing-out paper has the ability to hold the detail tonally in places where using other papers it would be blown out.

You’ve taken images in places such as Tibet and India using a large-format, 8×10 camera. Is that still your camera of choice?

Well, yes and no. Now that printing-out paper is no more, I don’t have an interest in printing my 8×10 negatives on conventional paper. Since my new work is no longer contact printed, I have retired the 8×10 and started using a 4×5 Dierdorf. In the field it is much lighter and easier to get around with. On the printing side, I am still working with my older 8×10 negatives quite a bit, but am using them with new digital processes and printing them at a larger scale.

Why did you travel to such far-away places for your photography?

Curiosity. I love places that have a rich visual history. Once you go to India you discover that what the country has to offer is a lifetime pursuit in its own regard. It is such a complex and amazing place. For example, the region of Ladakh, in northern India, is a huge landscape; there is a sense there, a depth simultaneously of mystery, timelessness and history.