For this week Tim asked us to present and talk about: a photograph by someone else we would be proud to have taken; and a picture of our own that we are pleased with.
I chose Robert Frank’s Bar Gallop New Mexico from The Americans as the first for three reasons. (1) It captures the sense of drama and feeling of threat experienced walking into a strange low-life bar; as such it contributes to the dystopian view of the USA in Frank’s book. (2) It shows that you can break all the rules (composition, technique) and still make a great picture. (3) I wish I had the courage to take such a picture!
Other class members showed pictures from a variety of named and unnamed photographers – the names included Steve McCurry, Dorothea Lange, David Sherman/Lee Miller, Ernst Haas, Jay Maisel and Ansel Adams. The genres included travel, wildlife, sports, townscape, landscape and seascape. All the pictures were studies of things or places (identifiable referents), no one chose anything conceptual or abstract.
My second picture was of Broad Lane, Cottenham, from my ongoing Fen landscape project, again chosen for three reasons. (1) It shows a very ordinary Fen lane or drove. (2) I think it confirms that the Fens are not just flat and boring, they have power and drama as landscape. (3) This picture captures the sense of a storm having passed, the aftermath.
The personal pictures by others again ranged across several genres. With a few exceptions the pictures were made on holidays or on walks/days out and showed the benefit of always carrying a camera, if nothing else. Two could be interpreted as being conceptual and one seemed to be part of an ongoing project/interest.