civilized ku # 2074 ~ picturing your life

At rest on my parent's grave - on the occasion of the death of the ex-wife's husband ~ Mt. Hope Cemetery - Rochester, NY (concept by me / pictured by The Cinemascapist)• click to embiggenThanks for all the thoughtful comments, re: the emotionally charged ~ a question entry. As always, I really appreciate it and I believe such responses / discussions are both interesting and instructive for all concerned. Thanks again.

Some of the comments mentioned the idea and the problems / barriers / inhibitions of picturing people / strangers whom one might encounter on the street / in public places. That picture making MO most certainly qualifies as making pictures of people but it's not exactly what I had in mind when writing about emotionally charged picture making - in part because the genre known as street photography can very often produce pictures which are as "cool" and emotionally detached as landscape pictures.

IMO, in many cases (but certainly not all), the people in such pictures are somewhat less-than-interesting lifeless forms like a prop, a bush or a tree in a landscape picture. After all, it's got to be difficult (but not impossible) to create an emotionally charged picture of a person or persons with whom the picture makers has no intimate or personal knowledge or connection. That said, one of the exceptions to that situation is to be had at the scene of some sort of tragedy or spectacular event.

The lack, on the part of the picture maker, of personal knowledge of a street photography subject is also why (once again, IMO) so many pictures of people made in the name of that genre exhibit such lifeless expressions of the faces of the observed. Or, on the other hand, if the expression is not somewhat lifeless, it is one of awkwardness or oddness - a fleeting expression which, quite frankly, tells the viewer nothing about the subject other than the fact that at any given moment a person can be pictured with their tongue hanging out of their mouth or some such similar expression.

All of that said, my preference for people on the street pictures is in the vein of that practiced by Eliott Erwitt, Martine Barrat, Teenie Harris, or Bruce Davidson (most notably in his East 100th Street work). In their work, there is exhibited a much more well-rounded (emotionally) and a somewhat more intimate human connection to the people in their pictures. There is, if you will, a warmth that is severely lacking in much of the cool and detached gaze of their street photography counterparts.

That does not mean that everything and everyone in their pictures is all peaches and cream. There is plenty of dark-side content, actual and implied. There is also plenty of irony, paradox, and some wit to be found in their pictures. However, there is most definitely an underlying compassion and dignity, on the part of the picture maker toward their subjects, which is brought to bear in the act of their picture making.

In any event, I believe that one must be engaged on some level - other than the simple desire to make pictures - with the people one pictures in order capture emotionally imbued pictures. IMO, I believe Martine Barrat said it best when she stated that ...

... she photographs her life and sometimes she takes pictures: it isn't the same thing.

I couldn't have stated it better. And, in my experience, I make my most emotionally imbued pictures (sometimes highly charged) when I engage in the act of picturing my life. At other times, I take pictures. It's most definitely not the same thing.