Scandling’s Paradox: The minute you try to define simplicity, you mess it up.
I’ve admired simplicity in art, design, writing—and pretty much everything else—since I was a kid. In the early 60s I was knocked out by the iconic Volkswagen "Think Small" ad: white page, small black-and-white photo of a VW bug, the two-word headline, a few words that got right to the point with no fluff, and the logo. Who needs more? It changed my life by defining a minimalist aesthetic. It led to a career in advertising and eventually got me here, making photographs rather than just directing them.
My influences have tended to be those who have worked in pigments more than those who have worked in photons, film, and pixels. John Constable, JMW Turner, Claude Monet, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Mark Rothko occasionally whisper in my ear while I’m working.
