|
Category Archives: Photo Theory
Ever since I’ve had my own baby, I’ve been given a whole new perspective on newborn portraits. For instance, the importance of the face: your baby’s face in these early days is very important for you to remember! It’s never going to be this small again, and right now, you have no idea what your child will end up looking like…but when you look back at these pictures, you’ll say: ah yes, this is definitely her, just look at her face!
Secondly, more than ever before, I’m enthralled by the interaction between parent and child, having just met each other days before. Capturing that portrait, that emotional frame, of these early relationships reminds one of what life is all about: these fleeting, perfect, new beginnings, amped up with love and possibility.
.jpg "undefined")
.jpg "undefined")
.jpg "undefined") 
One thing that I like about film is that it forces the photographer to shoot less. When one shoots less, each picture means more.
In this digital age, we are constantly encountering images, most of which are produced digitally. But when there are so many of a thing, it means less to us. The fantastical aura of a single piece of art is reduced when it is so quickly and easily made and distributed.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the ability to share pictures with the speed that the digital age allows. I love the democracy that is often let loose by such an ability.
But, as Walter Benjamin said: “that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.” Benjamin was originally referring to the mechanical reproduction afforded by photography compared to painting, but it now applies to digital versus film, due to the quantity of images available. Film forcibly limits my image-making. By limiting my quantity, it forces me to think more about each photograph, each frame of vision. Limited quantity means that each picture is that much more special.
The above photos were taken of my studio on one roll of film. The film: Fuji Pro 400H. The camera: Canon AE-1 with the original 50mm lens.
Flowers from Hedge in Main Street Market. Antique furniture & frames from yard sales and Craigslist, with some added love.
I have begun a personal project to document the warehouse where my studio is housed, in good, old-fashioned, film.
I’ve been incredibly inspired by film of late. While professionally I’ve always been a digital photographer, I’ve been looking for ways to slow down my art a bit. A while back, I painted my first oil painting with the same inspiration in mind. However, oil paint takes forever to dry. Like, weeks and weeks. I’m not sure I want to be THAT slow.
I’ve turned, instead, to film, by breaking out a few of my old cameras, and acquiring a few at yard sales here and there. It’s a great time to be into film, with inspiring photographers like Jose Villa and Jonathan Canlas hosting workshops and encouraging people to rediscover their film side. Further, there is Richard Photo Lab, who scans in your negatives as they develop your film. This completely changes everything! It lets me shoot film and not worry about how to get it into my computer (and into the 21st century).
Film has mainly been a fun diversion of late, but after posting a few Polaroids on the blog a while back, I’ve had a couple brides ask for a film supplement to their wedding. I’ll still be shooting in digital, but I’ll also be capturing some key shots with the dramatic colors that film allows, and a feel that digital photography just doesn’t possess. I’m very excited!
Also inspiring to me is the warehouse: from my own light-filled space, to the eclectic bookstore next door, to the gritty basement areas with soaring steel beams. I know that I’m lucky to have this space, and I want to be able to remember it years down the road.
Below is Part 1, a series of photographs taken in Random Row Books, the bookstore next to my studio. The camera: Canon AE-1. The film: Fuji Neopan 400. I’m loving the deep blacks, the bright whites, and the enveloping glow of the window light!
“Recording the details of our lives is a stance against bombs with their mass ability to kill, against too much speed and efficiency. A writer must say yes to life, to all of life: the water glasses, the Kemp’s half-and-half, the ketchup on the counter…Our task is to say holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist – the real truth of who we are: several pounds overweight, gray, cold street outside, the Christmas tinsel in the showcase, the Jewish writer in the orange both across from her blond friend who has black children. We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so that there can be no more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop these details from continuing.” – Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones
I’m inspired by the notion above, as the same is true for photography – we must say yes to the details around us! Look at them, photograph them.
The photograph below is a tidbit of a detail in my life that I have long ignored: just a part of the grit and ruggedness of Richmond Highway, which is route 1 south as it passes through Alexandria, Virginia. The thickness of the area around Hybla Valley was part of everyday life until I was 18, but only now is it making it through my camera lens on the occasional visit home. (I should look around more.)
Last Friday, I had some thoughts on the role of the relationships in documentary family photography.
Here are a few kinds of relationship interactions that make me absolutely giddy to photograph:
1. Mom and her newborn baby. They say that nothing can prepare you for the moment just after childbirth, when you see your baby for the first time. I feel so very lucky to be able to photograph babies in their first week of life, while a new mom is still basking in the glow of her creation, her little work of art. Don’t get me wrong: Dads can be just as enamored. But dads don’t get to experience the surge of oxytocin and other hormones that let mom walk on air those days after birth.
The way her head lingers while she looks at her baby in her arms, the purposeful way that she sets her down on the blanket for her first formal portrait – it’s the most primal connection that we get to experience, and photographing it gives me goose bumps!
2. The newly-wed couple. Two people have just committed their life to each other! Two adults gaze at one another after months of planning, months of build-up and then, when the whirlwind of the ceremony is over, there they are, dressed up and beautiful, realizing the gravity of their wedding day.
They finally look at each other in the calm before the reception, the first private moment they have together to let their mind clear, and they see the future.
3. A small child and me, the photographer. Children are funny: no matter how much I convince a young child to sit, stand, look this way, look that way, smile, open her eyes…no matter how much I position them, there’s really no such thing as “setting up” a picture with a child, because they will give you whatever look, whatever genuine expression they feel like giving you at a given moment. Little kids are 100% authentic – they haven’t learned to fake it yet.
4. And, if I’m super lucky: A whole-family interaction. This is, quite possibly, my favorite kind of relationship interaction. When there is more than one relationship that you can catch at one time, it’s like the planets are aligned just so, and you get to take a picture of all of it happening at once. This is what I consider the gold of documentary family photography: an entire family dynamic in one photograph, at one time. This is the stuff heirlooms are made of.
|
by catthrasher
1 comment
Stunning!!