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Human Hands VI — A Modern Mona Lisa
Continue Reading“Paying attention directly to objects and people in our world comprises maybe half our waking consciousness; the remainder of the day and night we spend in dreams, visions, and essentially comatose states of being.” From the Notebooks of C.R. Howerton The right hand of our foreground subject (the round-faced lady with curly hair) […]
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Noticing the Trivial and the Overlooked
Continue ReadingRhopography: A category of art. The visual representation of trivial, commonplace, usually overlooked things: uneaten food on a plate, a lost glove, wilting flowers. Still life. Photographers practice rhopography when they capture found still life compositions — such as the two pictured here — not set-up or constructed on purpose but discovered accidentally and […]
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Ironic Juxtaposition — Evolution #2
Continue ReadingOur image might make you smile while you are enjoying its rich pigments. Perhaps you snicker at the garish misfortunes of others. The irony of the juxtaposition strikes you soon enough, creates a feeling of unease gradually devolving into remorse — a way of life has been lost; anarchy now prevails. A bed lies askew […]
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Concerning Formalism, Entry #3
Continue ReadingOnly the rusty hardware in our foreground — fastened to a rail along the Wisteria Canal near Mexicali — saves this image from a colorful but still sterile formalism. The implements have a zoological quality, almost-alive robot animals with their snouts held at differing angles, seeming to express various (imputed) personal attitudes. We find them […]
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The High Cost of Having Fun
Continue ReadingThere is a universe of sand in Southern California and a four-wheel weekend army to exploit it. The glare you perceive in our photographs gives just a foretaste of the rigorous atmosphere awaiting as you cross this arid land. The boy in green with relaxed forward-sloping shoulders might be our subject. However I think we […]
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This Says It Better
Continue ReadingAges ago I made a straightforward monochrome rendering of this photograph. The image above created recently expresses better the lightness of that afternoon by the Aegean Sea, in a higher emotional key — closer to the lived experience — which included lots of fun alloyed with a definite recklessness.
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Considering Human Hands (1)
Continue ReadingPictures of hands make a freestanding genre of photography. Some operators take older hands for subjects, making the work more likely to succeed; even relaxed digits of elderly humans reveal character and tell a personal story. An electronic search reveals pictures of human hands in the hundreds of thousands: for instance, feminine hands hold flowers […]
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