Photography has a rich, and due to its nature, well-documented history. I would like to make this post an inverted process. The opening photograph by Ray Metzker.
Looking, Reading Photographs
Instead of writing a post and possibly getting some comments, I will present some photographs and invite your comments, thoughts, feelings about them. Then I will blend them into what I intend to write. I am curious to see how willing you are to share your thoughts and how similar or different each commenter may think. Feel free to pick as many photographs to comment on as you like. Comparing photographs to each other and making comparative comments are also welcome. It will be great if you share the link with your circles and invite them to share their ideas, the more the merrier.
This is an exercise in looking at photographs and reading photographs. If this will be the first time you are commenting on this site, your comment will not appear until I approve it. Responding to others’ comments is perfectly acceptable and encouraged.
Here are the photographs, let’s get this post off the ground!
(The commentary appears here.)
sal capirchio
Cemal –
Thank you for sharing. An interesting assortment of photographs.
The “Children at the puppeteer theater’. It’s always interesting to see expressions on children’s faces. These faces tell an incredible story! It sounds like an oxymoron, but diverse as the expressions appear to be there is a commonality to them. Varied and different but they all see m to tell the same story. It’s interesting to see how they all have a similar interpretation of what they are looking at, that is what is going on in front of them. All offering their own type of ‘fearful’ presentation, a different type of grimace and fear. The hands over the ears, the apparent screams, the wide eyed looks, the hands to the face, etc. All staring intently. Oh how I would love to see what they are looking at! (Or would I??)
Alma Levinsons – Caraquines Bridge. The bridge, the trestle, the clouds, the wires, immediately conveyed to me a sense of ‘movement and direction’. Movement of the clouds through/across the sky, movement of vehicles over the bridges, the electricity or voices through the lines – and even the bridges leading shape towards the horizon. Interesting crisscrossing pathways, which in their own right effect a sense of movement and direction – in my opinion – a lot going on here.
Jude Plante
The Washington Bridge shot is striking on two levels:
First is the juxtaposition between this massive man-made structure that, if you look closely, mimics nature in its form (if not it’s function): The strong bridge stanchions mimic the trunks of the trees – they are the trunks from which the cables flow just like the tree trunk is the base from which branches extend. The cables follow the same outward path that the branches follow from the trunk.
Second, look at the starkness of the natural setting that the maker used to make this image. Yes it’s winter, so the trees are barren and the grass is thin and yellowed, but you can’t help but feel that the bridge’s existence has caused this land to fall into a lack of use – a buffer zone between the cement and steel monolith and the rest of the world around it. We only have the area within the frame to examine, and with that limited information it makes one think: was this a once vibrant park or grove now rendered pale and colorless? If nature is alive is this area dispirited and lifeless as it competes with bigger and stronger and man-made?