Abstract

One way to look at a photograph is to look for depth.  The ability to convey depth on a flat plane is often considered one of the standard factors for evaluating a work.  Thus, among photographers, much is written about how to create this illusion. Discussions abound about depth of field, selective focus, aperture, using multiple objects diminishing in size in the distance, converging parallel lines. 

However, I find the opposite approach equally interesting:  to see a reality with depth and portray it as a flat plane, as if it had no depth at all, as if it were an abstract expressionist painting.  For example, Calle Empedrado La Habana Vieja; or Pershing Square Los Angeles, Women’s March January, 1917.

signifying reality

In this photograph, taken at Huilloc School, Peru, you can see my fellow photographers in the background.  It would be not too difficult to photoshop them out of the picture, to focus more directly on the young girl running to reach the pole, safe base in the game of tag; or to pretend that the “outsiders” weren’t there at all.  In so many photos now of our increasingly global, crowded world, though, we viewers know they are just outside the cropped frame, or photo-shopped away to create an illusion of the world as it once was, for the benefit of the photograph.  However, in reality, we were there, and this is the way it was. 

synesthesia

More than other art forms, photography is often named the one that captures reality, recording the way it really was, the one you can depend on.  I find still photography so deficient in this regard. Looking at the flat plane of the photo, where is the fragrant breeze I remembered, the speed of the scudding clouds, the beating glare of the sun, the siren wailing in the distance, a nip of chill in the air, the sound of voices whispering in the corner, or the lilt of a someone’s step on the sidewalk? In my photographs, I look for glimpses of these other elements that make up the reality of any moment —a synesthesia, where the record of sight can also convey the hint of movement, smell, sound, temperature, or rain, and the feeling of it all.

Rue des Ecouffes, Marais, Paris, March 2016