In Many of my photographs and photo-collages going back decades I have images of people with one eye open and one eye closed. I’ve always been attracted to this imagery because it’s both visually disconcerting and emotionally resonant. The person is grounded in reality but also allowing for an interior life, a dream. This is the dream eye.
Some of the images were the result of two photographs photoshopped together but many others were actually just one image where I asked the person to simply close one eye. It is easy to do but not easy to do in such a way as both eyes looked relaxed. When I found a person who could do that it was a real treat.
Here is a selection from that series.
Dream Eye with Pearl Earring
Dream Eye with Suspicion
Dream Eye with Future
Dream Eye with Broken Pot
Dream Eye with Perception
Dream Eye with Trust
Dream Eye with Question
Dream Eye with Excitement
Dream Eye with Decision
Thanks to all my friends and models who trusted me with their faces.
She was standing in the back of the vintage store, trying to step out of her closet into the real world. She had found her style, her look but she was still tentative about stepping into the limelight, about getting attention for who she was. But she was halfway out and you can’t get all the way out without first going half way. I knew she would make it eventually.
She sold me the paper coasters in Tucson and had a trucker hat on and I asked if I could take her photo but without it on and she said she was vain but she would let me and I am glad she took the hat off because her eyes were cool.
The brilliance of the sun on her and the chair and the piercing nature of her look were so intense that not only was it hard for her to open her eyes, it was hard for me to not be blinded while taking the photo.
The Model CS. I scouted out this area before she was done working so I knew I wanted to capture someone’s face with the beautiful light in the tall windows behind me. She obliged.
She was sitting across from me as I was holding down the fort waiting for our daughter while my unwife went browsing the little stores on 4th Avenue in Tucson. Turns out she was acquaintances with my daughter. I told her we were hoping her friends would watch out for her since we didn’t live in Tucson and she said she would, but was leaving to move back home to Oregon in three weeks.
‘Homesick’
She had moved to Tucson to become independent and discover new things, just develop on her own, which she had done for 6 months. But she was homesick for family and felt that the lack of structure to her life in Tucson, without the familiar obligations and connections was very hard. Her Uncle was in the hospital and she felt bad not being able to visit him.
She is a good and strong young woman, I think she will have a great life.
She was at the front desk, then in the gallery as I looked at the exhibition. We got into a long discussion about the images in the show and that led to a discussion about my work which led to me asking her if she wanted to create some art with me which led to her saying yes which led us outside to take some photos I will use in a collage and also some straight portraits, of which this is one.
She was the saleswoman at the Vintage Clothing Store who was also a photographer and an artist and knew about the cool show at the Center for Creative Photography and she was right, it was great.
‘The Saleswoman’
I loved her great retro style with the bobbed hairdo and the ‘little house on the prairie’ dress. Her face was serious but not morose, filled with intelligence and just a bit of world weariness. She was a student and had a lot of study on her plate.
Models getting ready for a shoot are sometimes more interesting and fun to photograph than the shoot itself.
The Application
She had been running around off-set wondering where her lip gloss was, so when she found it I followed her into the kitchen at the auto repair shop/photography studio and took some shots as she put it on.
We were having a photo shoot in an auto repair garage that adjoins the photography studio. We had someone in who was giving a tutorial on studio lighting. At one point he asked this model to do some poses on a divan/couch with her shirt pulled up, exposing her abs and belly button. I could tell she was a bit uncomfortable with that and was worried about what her parents would think, especially her father. The poses weren’t exploitive as such, but they were on the cheesy side and I could tell she was a bit awkward about it.
Turns out she has the same name as one of my daughters and graduated from the same high school, a few years later. We talked a bit about her going to college and what she wanted to do. She seemed to like the photos I took off-set. I will have to ask her what she thought about the ones I mentioned above.
