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Practicing Photo-Illustration
Continue ReadingI have heard it said: “People by instinct interpret photos literally, therefore find it hard to comprehend them any other way.” By transfiguring a photo into an illustration — the same authorities observe — the artist creates spaciousness; now the viewer’s imagination may operate in counterfactual dimensions. The portrayal below derives from a photograph and […]
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A Disturbing Artifact of the Wild West
Continue ReadingWhen wandering a museum in the Southwestern United States, one expects reminders of bygone rugged lives, curated to local standards of conservative taste, intended to produce only mild provocations. I explored the exhibits in this archive anticipating relaxation — then this horror of an object confronted me. The outline and condition of the thing jolts […]
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Ghost Musician Near the Sunflower River
Continue ReadingThe Sunflower River flows serpentine-fashion through Clarksdale, Mississippi. In the same curvaceous manner it runs north and south out of the city among surrounding fields — planted mostly in cotton. I talked for an hour by the water with the subject of our street-portrait before making this image. I cannot remember his regular name or […]
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Memories Of Dean …. 1956-2011
Continue ReadingCaptured along a mountain road of continual switch-backs and treacherous hairpin turns, our image shows a homemade memorial — in itself a creative still life, arranged on a slope descending steeply toward the pavement. The shrine contains rich information about its subject, Dean, alive on our planet from the year 1956 until 2011, when he […]
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Human Hands VIII — The Indecent Gesture
Continue ReadingI took this picture in Western Carolina at a saloon packed with intoxicated customers. I did not expect one of these wholesome college girls with excellent dental hygiene would give me the finger as I operated my camera. It was such a crowded scene full of rowdiness I did not notice the obscenity until the […]
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Hands & Fingers In Anticipation
Continue ReadingThe picture is an emanation from what seems the deep past: the year 2006. I made this image at Keeneland Racecourse outside Lexington, Kentucky. Walking toward that track across a park lush with grass and trees, about to enter an institution esteemed among lovers of thoroughbred horses, you sense you have stepped upon consecrated ground, […]
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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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Human Hands V — The Lady Aristocrat
Continue ReadingOur subject impersonates an 18th Century aristocratic lady — resplendent in wig and expensive garments — invited to a gathering at Petergof Palace outside Saint Petersburg, Russia. Active photographers the world over will recognize the message contained in her gesture: Don’t take my picture! It might scale up and generalize thusly: Stop what you are […]
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Human Hands III — The Ferry Driver
Continue ReadingOur subject pilots a passenger ferry many times daily across the Nile in Upper Egypt. I am standing with camera and longish lens on a raised platform making up the second-tier of his boat. Later on the observation deck — seated alone — I wonder about the gesture and open look bestowed on me by […]
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