Page 26 - Tạp chí bonsai cây cảnh BCI 2018Q1

Book Review

Are they meditations?

Comments on In Training

by Stephen Voss

By Michael Collins McIntyre, Canada

Images courtesy Stephen Voss

wonderful and evocative book of bonsai photographs
has captured the praise and imagination of world-
renowned bonsai artists: Ryan Neil, Bjorn Bjorholm,
Harry Harrington and Michael Hagedorn, for example.
Th
A e book, In Training by Stephen Voss, features wonder-
fully nuanced studies of bonsai from the National Bonsai and Penjing
Museum in Washington D.C. Stephen is not, himself, a bonsai artist
although he is quite emphatically a great artist. Although few of us may
recognize Stephen’s name, a great many of us are likely familiar with
his work even before encountering In Training. Stephen is a consum-
mately talented artist whose photography regularly appears in publica-
tions such as the Wall street Journal, Smithsonian, Newsweek, Vanity Fair,

IN TRAINING Wired, and the New York Times Magazine. Stephen’s work has appeared
By Stephen Voss on the cover of Time. His portraits include Henry Kissinger, Michelle
Hardcover, 80 pages. English. and Barrack Obama, Desmond Tutu, and Bill Gates. His portrait of
Publisher: Stephen Voss Mikhail Gorbachev was captured in a session—presented on Stephen’s
Photography; 1st Edition website—in which a remark of Stephen’s made the author of perestroika
(June 24, 2016) and glasnost, in essence, laugh unabashedly. A seldom-seen dimension
ISBN-10: 0692585168 of Gorbachev was revealed. Stephen’s portraits capture facial expression
ISBN-13: 978-0692585160 and posture in ways that portray the spirit; the ineffable qualities that
truly reveal the essence of his subjects. It is this artistic gift of capturing
essences that also illuminates and distinguishes In Training. This gift is
the common thread woven through the fabric of his art that elevates
Stephen’s photography—whether editorial or of bonsai—to a level of
Facing page, top right; true distinction.
Figure 2 The elaboration of this gift into In Training has unfolded slowly and
Stephen Voss photographing in the with a dramatic flourish or two. Stephen did not set out to be a photog-
National Bonsai and Penjing museum rapher. He was a computer science major. A passion for photography
in the soft light he feels optimal for followed upon his partner and now wife’s suggestion that he take a course
photographing trees
Bottom; in black and white photography and darkroom techniques that she had
Figure 3 taken previously. Charlene’s suggestion took hold. It also turns out that
Picea Abies “Pumila”/Norway Spruce Stephen and Charlene are walkers. Quite a number of years ago, a walk
took them from an inner-city neighborhood through the gates of the
In training since 2002.
National Arboretum to the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum. The
contrast between the confined and thoroughly urban, and the openness
and verdancy inside the walls, heightened the experience. Stephen
remarked “Its discovery and our first walk through it was, in a sense,

24 | BCI | January/February/March 2018