Ruth BernhardPhotographing Feeling

Ruth Bernhard interviewed by Bettina Gray, “Photographer Ruth Bernhard on Seeing Beyond the Usual,” 1991–92, Creative Minds series, KQED, San Francisco. Video by Lonnie Porro.

Be it a shell, a leaf, or a body, Ruth Bernhard approached each photographic subject with intense focus, identifying with its beauty. For the artist, the feeling of connectedness with her subject was “cosmic,”1 and she believed in creating photographs with empathy for her subject, not power over it: “I photograph things very tenderly, as if I have tears in my eyes, with a little bit of softness.”2 Beginning in the 1960s, Bernhard taught photography for more than thirty-five years, encouraging her students to photograph the way they feel—to use the camera, film, and light as tools to explore and express innermost thoughts and feelings. Deeply influenced by the photographs of Edward Weston, who was an important mentor to her, Bernhard used photography to unlock a new language, which she taught her students: “we may not verbalize the most important aspects of our lives, but we often can photograph them. . . . Thus, creative work is born of emotional necessity.”3

  1. Ruth Bernhard, “San Francisco,” in Ruth Bernhard: Between Art & Life, ed. Margaretta K. Mitchell (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000), 99. ↩︎

  2. Ruth Bernhard, in interview with Bettina Gray, “Photographer Ruth Bernhard on Seeing Beyond the Usual,” 1991–92, Creative Minds series, KQED, San Francisco, posted April 11, 2017, video by Lonnie Porro, 5:34 minutes, available at youtube.com/watch?v=DTaAKJMCOKg. ↩︎

  3. Ruth Bernhard, “Teaching,” in Ruth Bernhard: Between Art & Life, ed. Margaretta K. Mitchell (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000), 120. ↩︎