Garo usually wore an artist’s smock because he loved painting with oils. As a painter and a photographer, Garo challenged his apprentice to “see” or envision and also feel a picture before taking a photograph.
One winter day, he told Yousuf to look out the window. “What do you see?” Garo asked.
Yousuf reported the patterns he detected in the snow. Then Garo described the patterns he saw. The master’s vision was very different from the young man’s. Yousuf didn’t understand. “I have brown eyes like yours!” he exclaimed.
“Your eyes,” Garo said, “should not see exactly the way mine do. If you copy me, you will have learned nothing.”
The apprentice gained precious knowledge at Garo’s studio and the confidence to develop his own style. Yousuf would also say, “one must learn to see with one’s mind’s eye, for the heart and the mind are the true lens of the camera.”
“Photography” comes from the Greek words that mean “to draw with light”. In a camera, light enters through an opening, or aperture, past the open shutter and into a lightproof box. Here an image is recorded on a special surface that photographers prepared in the dark before putting it in the back of the box. The first cameras of 1839 could take half an hour to collect light from a scene and record the image. Now images are recorded on a microchip rather than metal (the first material used), glass or film. But light remains key.
