My Most Most Recent Images
"Me"
The family and I were walking around Northampton on a Saturday in Feb. about 10 days after my surgery.
Felt good to just slowly walk around with a camera again.
My sister Lisa took my camera and took this shot of me.
Pretty good pic Sis. (Can't say much for the subject/character though........)
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" The Race "
Guess who Won...
Feb. 2010
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Man on Street
February 2010
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"I want to change the world but don't know what to do"
Hit Play
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" Crypt"
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"On the Street"
2-7-10
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""Going Home"
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"We know that behind every image revealed there is another image more faithful to reality, and in the back of that image there is another, and yet another behind the last one, and so on, up to the true image of that absolute, mysterious reality that no one will ever see"
Michelangelo Antonion
Above statement by Michelangelo Antonion, a great film maker..........
Which got me thinking..................and ultimtely writing my thoughts below.
Someone asked me the other day about what makes a great Street Photography and I responded with this:
I believe a good street photography is when someone, as the observer, someone not engaged, passive, patient, somehow puts together on film (or sensor) a recording in a fraction of a second the emotion of a subject, and the beauty of the form. These moments happen in a fleeting moment. Just sit (stand) and watch the flow of life around you sometime, without a camera, just watch. You will see so much spontaneous, emotional moments that happen and ask yourself, is that a good photograph.
Since that response I thought and pondered about this some more and thought about some ”frames of reference” to which I came to some conclusions in my earlier learnings as a photographer. In the past, there has been sources of inspiration and guidance from time proven methods of capturing life, to which I’ve gravitated towards, namely paintings by the masters through the years.
Below is a painting by Diego Velazquez
called the ” Las Meninas” (The Maids of Honor).
Painted in 1656, it depicts almost a snapshot of court life in the 17th Century, with even the background depicted as being slightly out of focus. The artist stepping back from the easel in the painting is the author of this work as well, a bit of Spatiotemporal paradox.
Velazquez is looking at the scene he is painting, a scene that is on this side of the scene he is painting, in the same real space from which we are gazing at the picture.The “meninas” are the maids of honor surrounding the infant Margarita, heir apparent to the throne. On the left kneels Maria Augustina De Sarmiento, while on Margarita’s right is Isabel Velasco, Curtsying next to the dwarfs Mari Barbalo and Nicolas Pertusato, who is prodding the big mastiff with the foot.In the background is Marcello Ulloa, servant of the maids, is conversing with Diego Azcona, while the palace chamberlain Jose Valazquez appears in the rear doorway that opnes up to the space at the back. Paintings hang on the walls, including Reubens and Jordaen’s Apollo and Marsyas., while a mirror reflects the image of the king and queen of Spain, Phillip IV and Mariana of Austria.
This reflection in the mirror of the King and Queen is probably the subject of Valazquez’s painting. The canvas back is to us and it’s content is hidden but the mirror reveals them, capturing the reality that would escape a normal framing. All of the central characters are interacting among them at the centre, in the foreground.
You can see many relationships here, inside the frame and among the characters, outside the frame, behind and in front. This masterwork by Velázquez is a complex “shot” in which the frame is transcended. The beauty of the painting is not in the proportions, symmetry, balance, pleasing combination of colours or subjective impact it produces in the observer. We think it is fascinating due to its complexity and full use of the expressive possibilities of the frame for suggesting us relations, connections, sybbols, randomness, time and space. This painting stimulates the intellect, not the senses.
There are simple rules for framing based on proportions, distances and so on. You know though that rules are set to be broke. I think Art is about always breaking the rules and pushing the frontier of expression and communications.
Think on Music, for instance. There are periods involved in the construction of a set of rules, and its generalization, and subsequent long periods in which its dissolution is exploited artistically. Look at the visual Arts. In Painting, the impressionism was the liberation from photographic realism, fauvism was the liberation from realism of colours, symbolism and surrealism the liberation from the conventional meaning of things, cubism the liberation from realism of forms, and abstraction was the liberation from them all.
The immediacy and affordability of Photography makes it even more suitable than Painting for an unconstrained artistic evolution and free experimentation.
However, Photography, surprisingly, is yet narrowly linked to realism, to documentation. The frame can capture relations occurring inside it. But that is not the end of the story. The world surrounding the frame can be brought into the frame, and we can know things about it just looking at the frame. There is a simple example of it: think on a person looking to the photographer in a portrait. When we see the picture we feel the portrayed person is looking at us, outside the photograph. In this way, the photograph is linked to the real world.
It is not an isolated artistic object any more. The same occurs with that part of the world below the frame, over it, at the right, and the left or behind the scene. Temporal associations can be included in a photograph as well. We can connect the moment in which the photograph is taken with some event of the past or of the future. It is usual to see the consequences of past events in the present scene in many photographs. It is difficult to use those possibilities at full with an artistic intention though. However, photographs with this kind of suggestive power are more attractive for the mind.I think the best photographs also have this quality.Below is a picture which I believe reflects some of the characteristics which make a good street photograph or a “snapshot” of life.
I’m not saying it’s a great photograph (below) but I believe it captures a scene in somewhat the same way as the master painters captured and portrayed their art.
Shot in NYC - JAlan
We can see what appears to be a policeman and another man inside the building to the left of the frame, that appear to be looking toward the photographed scene, but we are not sure. Is there another activity going on inside or directly outside the frame of this photograph, beyond the revolving doors to which we are not aware? A young man way in the back of the crowd is looking inside the glass building, perhaps, looking at the same scene as the policeman and man inside the building?
We don’t know if there is a connection between these characters, or what they looking at and is it connected to the main part of the scene in front. We can intuit seeds of future actions in this photograph, but we cannot be sure about them. Something is happening with the character with his back to us, showing something to the audience who is captivated. A fellow with a lizard, who is facing away towards the figure with the back turned to the viewer, but is pointing towards presumabley the photographer (me) for some reason (why?), we wouldn’t know this for sure if the other central character to the left wasn’t giving the evil look, staring directly at the photographer. One can surmise there is agitation of the two central characters,…. but towards what, where, towards whom, it is not absolutely clear. He is of course holding a fairly large lizard as well. The behaviour or relations between the characters could change due to those events, but we have only one shot. We cannot know for sure if this image shows an equilibrium or not, and we remain intrigued……….
JAlan
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" Cassandra "
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" SubWay"
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" Commander Mitchell "
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" Steel Wire "
January 2010
Chicopee
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" In the Car "
Springfield - Last Year
Going through negatives.....
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"Twilight"
in New Zealand
As I was going nowhere………
Somewhere past the mountains
I saw the devils grin bared
To which in mind appeared
My Mind light and weary
Parked to ponder deeply
Night dark and dreary
I must like the company
Of no one by my side…..
Finding shelter from the storm…
Trying to keep warm and hide….
I guess I’m allright…
As I sink into twilight……
Awake……….once again…
Clouds parting…fusion on the ground
Still I wonder……….
As I embrace the dawn….
by JAlan
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" Down the Street"
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" Ice"
January 2010"
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"The Drummer"
1-23-10 Northampton
" Forward To Yesterday "
by JAlan
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"The Tree"
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"Tony and Keith"
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"Girl with Flag"
Taken sometime back in Northampton.
I had misplaced the negatives and recently found them.
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"Lady in Snow"
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"Through the Glass"
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"Hands"
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"Tomb"
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"Snow Light"