In Frame & Verse This Month

This month’s newsletter circles around a theme that has been quietly threading its way through my conversations, my reading, and my own practice: the act of naming — and the moments when we choose not to name at all.

I begin with a short reflection that turns a familiar idea back on itself: Should photographs have titles at all? Rather than resolving the question, I offer a few provisional thoughts — an opening gesture toward a longer essay that is still taking shape.

From there, I shift to the title of my own six‑part series, Creative Growth and the Art of Seeing, and share a bit of its personal and historical lineage. The story reaches back to my early teachers, to the books that shaped my way of seeing, and to the quiet influences that continue to guide my work.

And finally, I introduce the series itself — a structured path for photographers who want to deepen their vision, clarify their instincts, and cultivate a more intentional, sustainable creative practice. It is an invitation to slow down, look closely, and grow with purpose.

A Note on Image Titles

After publishing my blog post, Why a Good Image Title Matters, I mentioned that I would continue the conversation this month with a newsletter article that looked more closely at titles themselves. Since then, I’ve been sitting with the subject — through personal reflection and through conversations with members of the photographic art community. The more I listened, the more the question seemed to widen rather than narrow.

I was reminded, too, of artists who have deliberately resisted titling. Wolfgang Tillmans, for instance, has often leaned on Untitled, favouring an open encounter between image and viewer rather than directing interpretation. Cindy Sherman, in her own way, sidestepped narrative titles by numbering her work — Untitled #96, for example — creating distinction without prescribing meaning. Their choices resurfaced an older curiosity of mine: what happens when we choose not to name at all.

That lingering idea of no titles — or Untitled — stayed with me. If the concern is that titles give too much away, then surely, in some cases, location and year — as Walker Evans often practised — could reveal just as much, if not more, than a thoughtfully considered title. The more I considered this, the more the ground beneath the question shifted.

Yes, images should speak for themselves. But what happens if we remove everything entirely? No title. No location. No year. Does the work lose something — or does it gain a different kind of presence? Does the absence of context create a void, or does it open a wider field of possibility? I found myself returning to these questions with increasing insistence.

My original blog post focused on how to create good titles, and why they matter; it never asked whether images should be titled at all. That question has since surfaced more urgently, as though it had been waiting beneath the surface for the right moment to be named.

This past Thursday, I found myself at the beautiful Polygon Gallery for the Diane Evans book launch and the Capture Photography Festival wind‑down soirée. (Despite the shared surname, Walker Evans was not related to Diane Evans.) During the presentation, we were reminded that Diane herself rarely titled her images — a detail that felt perfectly timed, given the questions I had been carrying.

While there, I connected with Monika Szewczyk, the gallery’s Audain Chief Curator, and invited her to take part in an interview where I hope to explore her thoughts on titles — and on the possibility of no titles at all. My line of questioning piqued her interest. I’ve also reached out to the Vancouver Art Gallery, hopeful for additional perspectives, and I’ll continue to research the broader history and philosophy of titling in photography.

I’ll be reporting back here, likely in June or July, once these conversations have had time to unfold and settle into something clearer.

On Creative Growth and the Art of Seeing

When I wrote the six‑part series Creative Growth and the Art of Seeing as part of The Evolving Photographer, the work unfolded slowly and deliberately: writing, researching, restructuring, more writing, then refining. One of the final tasks was to find a title that felt true. I tried several options, searching for something lyrical that would also speak to the series’ purpose. Creative Growth and the Art of Seeing settled in almost quietly, and although I couldn’t immediately explain why, it resonated.

A few weeks later, while choosing the three books that had most shaped my street photography for an article I was preparing, I pulled Photography and the Art of Seeing by Freeman Patterson from my shelf. Time had softened the memory; I had nearly forgotten that Dietmar Waber, my high school photography teacher, gave me that book as a graduation gift in 1980. I owe much to Dietmar and his wife Angela — for opening my eyes, for insisting on care and precision in the darkroom, and for the quiet mentorship that shaped both my practice and my life.

Years later, I was fortunate to take a multi‑day workshop with Freeman Patterson himself, an iconic Canadian artist. I have a funny personal story from that time, but that’s for another day — it still makes me smile.

Patterson’s book remains excellent. It has long been recommended reading in many post‑secondary photography programs. It is not a technical manual. Instead, it offers practical exercises in observation, visual design, and expression — invitations to slow down, notice relationships of light and form, and translate what you see into a deliberate visual language.

Dietmar gave me the book because he recognised it as the next logical step in my photographic education. As I turned the pages again, the connection between Patterson’s title and my own became clear. Similar titles aside, the deeper kinship lies in intention: like the book, this six‑part series is not about technical skills; it is about developing vision, finding a photographic language, and shaping a personal style.

Teaching these qualities is more daunting than teaching technique because vision is subjective, iterative, and rooted in habit and attention rather than in rules, mechanics or science. Trying to honour Freeman’s book — and Dietmar’s legacy — raised the stakes for me. It made the work feel both more personal and more necessary.

Stay with me for all six articles in the series — and let me know how the journey lands with you.

Introducing: Creative Growth and the Art of Seeing — A Six‑Part Series

Street photography has always been more than a genre to me. It is a way of moving through the world, a discipline of attention, and a lifelong evolution of seeing. This new six‑part series grows out of that belief. It offers a guided journey for photographers who want to deepen their practice, sharpen their instincts, and better understand the forces that shape their creative voice.

Building on the ideas introduced in Part 1: A Living Library of Inspiration, the series provides a clear, structured path toward genuine artistic growth. Each chapter invites you to look inward, study outward, and engage with your work in a more intentional and reflective way. The aim is not speed, but depth — a slow unfolding of the habits, influences, and visual patterns that quietly guide the way you photograph.

Whether you’re discovering your influences, clarifying your style, or challenging the boundaries of your visual logic, this series is designed to help you become a more thoughtful, self‑aware, and evolving street photographer. The work asks you to pay attention not only to the world in front of the lens, but also to the one behind it — the inner landscape that shapes how you see.

Although the focus is street photography, the concepts and exercises are easily adaptable to any photographic genre. Vision is transferable. Attention is transferable. The practice of seeing — truly seeing — belongs to every photographer, regardless of subject or style.

Part 1 was published on April 22, 2026 — An Evolving Library of Inspiration: Photographers Who Shape My Way of Seeing. The remaining chapters will follow in a steady rhythm every second week, each one building on the last, each one offering a new way of approaching your craft with clarity, curiosity, and intention.

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