This wasn’t really taken in London, it just feels like a victorian London scene, ala
Jack the Ripper, so I titled it that.
The shadow is actually me shining a small flashlight on her face during a long
exposure. I didn’t realize the shadow would be there but when I looked at it later it
certainly had a very cool effect, adding to the content of the image.
3rd in a series on ‘night’. It was a very hot and humid night and I loved that she had
that sheen or glow of heat on her. I also loved the blue/red compositional element of
the door and wall behind her.
2nd in the week long series on night images. The idea was to capture both the cute,
sweet smile all the other photographers were trying to get from her and then have her
turn her expression into a scream, similar to the graffitied image. I wanted to try to
capture the feeling of the surface pretty and the interior pain someone might feel at
the same time.
I am going to do another week long series, this one of night images I have done over
the course of the last 2 months in Tulsa. This first one was serendipitous, the
graffitied woman’s face and the box were already on the brick wall. I saw the idea
pretty quickly, that the woman in the box would be dreaming to get outside it and the
floating image of the graffitied woman’s singing/orgasming/yearning face would be her
dream face.
The model Z was great, understanding what I wanted and game to make it happen.
This is part of a week long posting showing a series I did way back in the 80’s where
I combined photographs of body impressions on top of Impressionist paintings.
This is one of Vince and I. My part of it was taken after wearing a bathing suit
under my pants for an entire day in anticipation of going swimming, which never
happened. When I got back to the hotel with my wife and took off my clothes I had
this incredible impression on my stomach from the elastic and asked her to take a
photo of it since it was so funny looking.
This was the first photo I took about impressions actually, though it wasn’t until I
took a sandal strap impression a few years later that I figured out the connection to
the impressionist paintings.
This is a great example of how I use bad photos. The sandal strap photos turned out
too purple, made the skin look deathly. But when you put them against the slate green
color of the Cezanne painting the purple becomes a perfect color IMHO.
2nd in a week long series showing my ‘Impressionist Suite’ from the mid-80s.
The body impression of a sock on a calf from a friend of mine fit perfectly over this
painting by Mary Cassatt. I loved how the arch of the calf connected the two arms and
created a sort of elongated football shape in the middle of the image.
One of the things I was trying to accomplish in this series was to force the viewer to
see the abstract qualities of the original impressionist painting by covering up the
main subject matter of the painting with the latter day impressionist photo.
This week I am going to show you an early series of mine, one of the first where I
collaged photos onto other material. I had been focusing on photographing physical
memories that showed up on one’s body and I had done a series on tanlines earlier.
Now I focused on body impressions. These were photos I took of parts of the body
having been pressed by something. Maybe a bracelet, or a bra strap or underwear
elastic. Something that left an impression. I then had the idea of collaging those
photos on top of Impressionist paintings. The play on the idea of impressions on
bodies vs. impressions of light in paint appealed to me.
I took it to the point of making the images a collaboration between the original
impressionist artist and myself, titling the works so they included part of the
original title with my new addition and dating the work from the inception of the
original back in the 1800’s to the time I added my photos on top in the 1980s and
90s. Some fellow artists and gallery directors etc. thought that was a bit
pretentious of me, assuming I was equal to the impressionists. But I know this
much….the impressionists themselves would have enjoyed both the fun play on art and
the resulting images.
Many people want to do something interesting with their lives. They want to
accomplish something. But they are unaware that effort is needed, deliberate focused
effort, to do those things. What stops them is the overwhelming nature of the big
picture. ‘I can never graduate from college, I can never get a law degree, I could
never move to another country, I could never learn photography.’ They are thinking
about ALL the things they need to do and it seems like it can’t be done.
But the truth is you don’t have to do ALL those things. All you need to do is the
next thing. If you, for example, want to be a portrait photographer. What is it you
need to do? Do you need to have an entire studio, all the top equipment, the best
computer and software and printer? No, you don’t. What you need to do is take a
photo and look at it. Then maybe you need to read your camera manual and play with
the settings. Then maybe you need to look for good lighting opportunities in your
house or yard and take some more photos.
See what I mean? You might have a goal, you might have a dream, and that is good.
But the key is that you then put that big picture dream on the back shelf and focus
on the events of today, right here, right now. Here is an example. Take Tiger
Woods, the famous golfer. It is obvious that from an early age his goals have been
lofty. He truly has set his sights on being the best golfer ever, winning the most
tournaments over the longest amount of time as possible. Intimidating goals to say
the least.
But guess what? Interviews with him repeatedly have him saying that when he is on
the golf course he thinks of NOTHING but the shot he has right in front of him. Not
the dreams, not the accolades, not the money. Just the shot. And the amazing part
is the more he is able to focus on that one shot and NOT think about anything beyond
it, the closer he comes to winning the tournament, having the best season, and having
the greatest career in golf.
He has very few stop signs in his head. What are your stop signs?
Stop sign #10 – But…but…but…
Answer: no excuses, go be who you are suppose to be and create what you are suppose
to create. Don’t wimp out, don’t be a lazy baby about it. If you see something on
the side of the road that might make a good photo, STOP YOUR CAR and take it! And
no, I don’t mean you should do that on the way to your daughter’s wedding with a car
full of people. Be smart about it obviously.
Here is a good quote. “It is easier to act yourself into another way of feeling than
it is to feel yourself into another way of acting.” What that means in the context
of the stop signs is that if you wait until you feel creative to act on it, you might
wait a long time. But if you act creative, if you take the photo, walk around the
corner, look at a detail, pay attention to the light, even if you don’t feel
creative, guess what? You will have a VERY creative day!
So, go take the photo! Then take another and another and another until you can’t
stop smiling because you are so proud of yourself, just as we all will be.