Growing up, I didn't give my grandfather's photography a second thought. I wasn't involved in his work, except that I helped my dad print his negatives.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I guess I knew my dad was into photography, so a part of me was interested in picking it up to understand him a little better.
My father thought photography was done by lowlifes.
My father did advertising photography.
My dad was actually against me being a photographer. He thought it was a dead-end job and that you end up doing baby pictures and weddings.
I began photographing in 1946. Before that, I was a painter and drawer, with my mother and father's support. They were a bit pissed when I went into photography. They thought photographers were guys who took pictures at weddings.
I began drawing as a very young child and had a grandfather who experimented with photography, so those things constituted my first exposure to art.
Actually, when I first started dabbling in photography, I was still working for my parents as a salesman.
Photography belongs to a fraternity of its own. I was young and enthusiastic and wanted to take good pictures to show the other photographers. That, and the professional pride of convincing an editor that I was the man to go somewhere, were the most important things to me.
I was brought up on art. My father thought I had a great hand at art and sent me to art school. But he did not want me to become a photographer.
My dad had been an ardent amateur photographer, and he taught me to compose a photograph from the back to the front, and then populate the picture.