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The Sasse: Where love stories develop between art and viewer |
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Because I Asked | Gene Sasse |
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I am always doing that which I cannot do," wrote Pablo Picasso, "in order that I may learn how to do it." A small sentence. Most of a working life sits inside it. This is a portrait I made of Jimmy Carter at his home in Plains, Georgia. He was a former president of the United States. I photographed him in his personal workshop, where he made furniture by hand. Two makers in one room. The portrait exists because I asked if I could. The asking came in pieces. I had a client, Sam Maloof, the master woodworker. I was making a book on him called Maloof: Beyond 90. I knew Carter owned a Maloof rocker and was a woodworker himself. I had his fax number from Craft in America, where I was also a contributor. I faxed and asked if he would write the introduction. He said yes. Then I asked if I could come photograph him in his workshop. The first answer was no. I asked again. The second answer was yes, for ten minutes on a Tuesday at ten in the morning. I have spent a long time asking. I did not have the academic credentials for the things I have ended up doing. I did not have the lineage. I did not study art history before I built an art museum. I did not earn a degree before I started teaching college students. I did not come from a family that opened doors. The doors were unlocked. Someone had to walk up and ask. Most doors are not locked. Most people stand in front of them and assume otherwise. The question that opens almost any door is short and not complicated. May I. Can I. Would you. Three words at most. They tell you the door is closed. The school tells you. The professional society tells you. The voice inside you, the one you inherited from someone who was wrong about you, tells you too. Most of those voices are guessing. None of them has seen the room behind the door. None of them knows what you will do once you are inside. The asking is not bravery exactly. It is a small refusal. It refuses the story you were given about what you are permitted to do. It costs almost nothing. It risks almost nothing. The worst that can happen is a no, and a no is information, not damage. Sometimes the no is not the end of the conversation. Sometimes you ask again. The not asking is the real cost. The not asking is the room you never entered, the work you never made, the person you never met, the version of yourself you never found out about. It is the quietest kind of loss. Most people who have suffered it do not know they have. I asked if I could photograph a president. I asked if I could teach. I asked if I could start a museum. Each yes was small at the time. Together they became a life. The portrait above is one frame from that life. The man in it has since died. The exposure remains. The asking that made it possible was small at the time. It always is. The smallness is part of the lesson. A life is built sentence by sentence. The early sentences are short. May I. Can I. Would you. The sentences that come later are longer because they are made of what those first short ones unlocked. Looking back, almost everything that matters started with a question someone almost did not ask. I asked. So have many others. The world does not always say yes. It does not always say yes the first time. But it says yes more often than the small voice inside you predicts. That voice was wrong about you once. It is probably wrong now. |
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| Website: genesasse.com | |||||
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