In the first of a new ongoing series, Nova photographer Joseph Gerhard discusses a photograph that has a particular importance for him - his ’significant shot’.

Untitled by John Howard Griffin

Oddly enough, the first photograph I ever saw that made me realize the potential power of photography was not by someone primarily known as a photographer.

In 1970, when I was 18, John Howard Griffin published a book about the photography of Thomas Merton called A Hidden Wholeness. Griffin, who was well known at that point as the author of Black Like Me, had become close friends with Merton and would spend the later years of his life writing about and photographing the monk. Though most of the photos in the book were Merton’s, there were several that Griffin had taken at Merton’s cabin at the Abbey at Gethsemani, the Trappist monastery in Kentucky where Merton lived and worked. This was one of those photos and it just just stopped me in my tracks. It had a kind of vivid intensity that made it seem much more real and palpable than the things physically surrounding me. By that time, I’d already become familiar with the experience of looking at a mundane object—a door, a cup on a table, a metal bucket on the grass—and suddenly have it appear clear and present, as though I’d never seen anything like it before.

This was the first time I realized that photography could communicate that experience exactly. The way the light coming from the window could give a palpable texture not only to the kettle and pot on the stove, but also to the wisp of steam in the air, literally took my breath away. It was what Emily Dickinson called “a certain slant of light”. And I found that effect heightened by the fact that the pill bottle and jar of instant coffee were included in the frame, rather than edited out.

Later, I learned a lot more about the technical side of photography as well as the work of photographers that had the biggest impact on me—Eugene Atget, Walker Evans, Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Minor White, Harry Callahan, Emmet Gowin—but this photo by John Howard Griffin is still the touchstone that reminds me why I became interested in photography in the first place.

Joseph Gerhard

Joseph’s print ‘Landing’ is available from just £19+p&p.