A few days after Tony Ray-Jones died I went through my con­tact sheets to find pho­tos I’d taken of him, to make a memo­r­i­al to him. I only found one photo. It was because I’d been around him so much I’d taken him for grant­ed and never pho­tographed him. He was just always there, so I’d never con­sid­ered him impor­tant enough to pho­to­graph. The les­son is, you should be pho­tograph­ing now the things that you real­ly care about. That’s the only thing you should be pho­tograph­ing, things you care about deeply.

The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although, in almost all men, obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates. In this action, it is genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every man. In its essence, it is progressive. The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they, — let us hold by this. They pin me down. They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.