After a swim ~ Bog River / Low's Lake - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenPeople - know and unkown - have been slowly appearing in my "serious" pictures. That said, there has been no conscious or concerted effort to make that happen in my picturing - it's just kinda happening.
In fact, it's happening in much the same manner as my gradual shift from "pure" landscape pictures (ku) to my signs-of-humankind in the landscape (civilized ku) did - slowly but surely, over an extended period of time. However, to my way of thinking and acting, there is one primary difference between making pure and/or civilized landscape pictures and the making of peopled pictures - that of how the pictured people are represented.
In the current state of pictures-as-art (as opposed to family and friends snapshots and the like), it is quite fashionable - and I don't mean that in a disparaging sense - to represent people as a rather self-affected lot - people posing with a very-much-aware-of and staring-at-the-camera (occasionally not) "vacant"/ deadpan expression. Perhaps that is in fashion because it does, in fact, illustrate the rather detached, self-centered, and emotionally cool attitude that is representative of much of the populous, especially that of the younger generation.
A good example of such pictures can be found in Michael Frahm's work, The Excerise Of Look And Fail To See.
When viewing these pictures, I don't detect much human "warmth". In most cases, after working my way through a handful of such pictures - pictures in a single body of work - I tend to lose interest or, perhaps more accurately stated, I just don't want to see any more pictures that are, to my sense and sensibilities, rather "lifeless" and somewhat depressing.
That said, I am aware of a few picture makers (I'm reasonably certain that there are many more that I am not aware of) who manage to circumvent the fashionable thing and picture people with at least a modicum of human warmth. One such picture maker, David Strohl, is making some very inviting / interesting pictures that include a people presence in his Drift Savanna project.
What I like most about Strohl's people pictures is the often subtle and, therefore, interestingly human expressions that he captures in his picturing. The people just simply appear to be being themselves in a rather "honest" and straightforward expression of themselves. Consequently, to my eye and sensibilities, I want to see more, not less, of these pictures. For the most part, his pictures make me want want to meet the people portrayed in them or at least not want to avoid them in a chance encounter.
I can't say that about the people in Frahm's pictures. They may, in fact, be very nice and interesting people, but they don't look that way in Frahm's pictures. At least, that's how I see them - both the pictures and the people portrayed therein.
All of that said, it could be opined that today's people picture and few recent others seem to be drifting more toward Frahm's way of seeing rather than that of Strohl.
To be honest, I'm not certain that is way I want to go and I think that the only way of avoiding that is to approach my subjects and let them know that I am making a picture of them. Hopefully, I can coax an "honest" expression or two out of them although the question then becomes, is it really honest?
Monday, July 19, 2010 at 09:31AM 
