Photo Corners headlinesarchivemikepasini.com
A S C R A P B O O K O F S O L U T I O N S F O R T H E P H O T O G R A P H E R
Enhancing the enjoyment of taking pictures with news that matters, features that entertain and images that delight. Published frequently.
Matinee: 'A Tribute to Discomfort: Cory Richards'
9 April 2016
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 130th in our series of Saturday matinees today: A Tribute to Discomfort: Cory Richards.
In this four-minute Blue Chalk production, athlete and photographer Cory Richards tells how at the age of 14 he had dropped out of high school and become homeless. His education, he says, came from observing the struggle happening around him.
And photography became his voice to describe what he saw.
Adventure puts you outside your comfort zone, he says. That's the mountains for him.
'I think intimacy is the linchpin to all great photography.'
He had just become the first American to master an 8,000 meter peak in the winter. He and fellow climbers Simone Moro of Italy and Denis Urubko of Kazakhstan had suffered through hurricane-force winds, minus 50-degree temperatures and unstable snow conditions without porters or oxygen to reach the summit.
But the celebration was short-lived.
The trio was hit by a Class 4 avalanche that had decided to resculpt the face of Gasherbrum II in Pakistan. It nearly killed him and his two companions.
When he realized he had survived, he turned the camera on his half-frozen face. The photo he took of himself as an avalanche survivor ended up on the cover of National Geographic, which also named him one of its Adventurers of the Year in 2012.
Discomfort doesn't matter, he insists. Conveying the discomfort in a picture is what counts.
"I think intimacy is the linchpin to all great photography," he says. If you can make somebody laugh, he continues the argument, you've connected with a friend for life and a whole world opens up.
It's a short story but there are several more on his Web site's Stories page -- if you're up for an adventure.