DECEMBER | 2024

Paul Caponigro is gone now, his long life folded into the quiet mystery of the universe he so carefully sought to reveal. He was my mentor. Not in the way of formalities, but in the way the wind teaches a tree to bend or the moon teaches the tides to rise. I first encountered his work not in a gallery or through some curated introduction, but in the humblest of places—a B. Dalton Bookseller, tucked into the Oakland Mall outside Detroit. It was a chance meeting, the kind of serendipity that feels predestined only in hindsight.

 

The book was called Landscape, now long out of print. I found it on a shelf and opened its pages, and there it was: a world transformed. His photographs weren’t just images. They were prayers, whispered in silver tones, carried on the breath of the earth itself. They stopped me mid-step, mid-thought, mid-breath. I remember the feeling: a sharp intake, a silent stillness. These weren’t just landscapes; they were portals. They pulled me into something vast and ancient, yet intimate and alive. I left the bookstore that day haunted, consumed, as though I’d glimpsed a secret I wasn’t yet prepared to hold.

 

published by McGraw-Hill 

 

Years later, in graduate school, Paul’s work found me again. The George Eastman House—now the George Eastman Museum—in Rochester, opened The Wise Silence, a retrospective of his photographs. The title came from Emerson, a phrase from “The Over-Soul,” and it fit Paul’s work like a skin. 

 

~The Over Soul by Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Paul's prints hung there, luminous and alive. I walked among them as if wandering a sacred grove, the glow of each photograph like a soft light filtering through leaves. These were the images I’d seen in “Landscape”, but here, in their original form, they radiated something beyond words. I returned again and again, circling the gallery, drawn by their gravity, needing to be in their presence, needing to listen.

 

Years later, I moved to Santa Fe, and Paul crossed into my life not as a distant artist but as a flesh-and-blood presence. A newspaper ad announced a print sale at his studio. I went, compelled by the chance to stand in the orbit of the man whose work had so altered my vision. In his studio, I found stacks of prints, quiet treasures spread across the room. Among them were small versions of his iconic Running White Deer, Wicklow, Ireland, but they were scratched, imperfect. I must have murmured something aloud, because Paul appeared at my side. We began to talk. That conversation opened the door to two years of apprenticeship, though I didn’t call it that at the time. I was simply there, working beside him, learning through the rhythm of his days.

 

The work was humble, repetitive, and holy. Paul would lift the prints from the developer, and I would carry them forward—washing, drying, mounting. Museum rag board. Exacting specifications. Coffee lightened with Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream, a quiet indulgence. I asked questions when the moments allowed. How did he achieve the shimmering blur of “Running White Deer”? What drew him to the megalithic stones? His answers were spare, like his images, leaving space for me to find my own meaning.

 

When I turned forty, Paul gave me the greatest gift: one of his “Running White Deer” prints. But, in true form, there was a task embedded in the gift. I mounted about a dozen of his prints for his galleries, careful with print trim and mount position. It was work that felt like worship, my hands carrying forward his vision.

 

Alfred Stieglitz once said, “It’s good to know there’s an Ansel Adams loose in the world.” For me, it’s Paul. Knowing he was out there—wandering, creating, transforming ugliness into beauty—felt like a kind of tether to something essential. He’d say it often, his guiding mantra: “If the world hands you ugliness, return beauty.” And that is what he did, again and again, with his photographs, with his life. Beauty was not an indulgence for him; it was an act of resistance, a reclamation of what is sacred.

Paul moved to Maine soon after we worked together, closer to his family. Distance grew between us, but his presence remained. His work was my touchstone, his voice an echo in my thoughts. Now, he has returned to the silence he so revered. The wise silence. But his photographs remain, glowing like embers, reminding us to see, to listen, to answer ugliness with beauty.

 

I carry his lessons with me. I carry the quiet. I carry the glow. And I am grateful—grateful to have known him, grateful to have worked so closely beside him for a time, grateful for the beauty he gave to a world that so desperately needed it. And continues to.

 

 

Me

 

 

 

 

 

 

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