Think, Look, Make

Once in a while I take a photo that I love, not necessarily because it is an excellent photo in terms of the usual criteria. This photo has few megapixels and a conventional composition. It is just a snapshot.  To me, it represents two people coming together. It happened spontaneously. They only met seconds before I took the photo. They don't fit the usual stereotypes. The man is not represented as black men often are- as a criminal, as poor. The girl is not represented in any stereotypically feminine or objectified manner. They are different in age, in gender, in race, in height, all of those indicators of the usual boundaries we put between in each other. One is nicely dressed, one has no shoes. And they are in a moment and place defined by art. They are about to dance and the location is a museum and garden that has come into existence through one man, Calouste Gulbenkian, who decided to use his fortune to buy art and leave it for future generations. ...

            Off the top of my head, some of these start with a B or C or W. There is even that word trollop, and a series of words like “resting bitch face.” The B word is sometimes used to refer to particularly weak men. Cougar is an example of how unusual it still is to imagine a younger man and older woman loving each other. I can think of many women who are married to men 15, 20, 25, 30 years older, which we accept. But while Melania relaxed, President Macron's wife became the butt of many jokes. Regarding “resting bitch face,” I had no idea this was a thing until I heard a teenager say it. I googled it and found that scientists have even used software to analyze the “phenomenon” and it is described as an “affliction.”  Unknowingly, I have taken pictures, such as the one here, which could illustrate this affliction. This article goes on to say, “So what does this mean if you think you have RBF? I...

This is one of those times when I knew the photographs would fail me (and I only had my cheap phone camera), but I took them anyways. I came upon this scene of a man reading to a woman in park and I couldn't disturb it by getting too close. The woman's Gauginesque back and arm, the man reading with such formality and intent, all of it grasped my attention. Periodically, the man stopped reading and they both appeared to silently take in the meaning of his words. I am glad I dared to walk to another vantage point because from there I could see the magenta flower in the woman's hair and a young girl lying on the woman's lap, reading her own book. Where in the world could such a thing happen in 2016? What kind of man would dare to enact such a scene in public? Have the troubadours come back to life? 

My eyes fixed upon a small ivory sculpture in the window. I looked for the gallery owner to ask if I could take a photo of it. He obliged and I asked him about the price. It was far beyond my means and I told him that immediately so as not to waste his time, but he insisted on having me hold it. We entered into a wonderful conversation about African art and looked at a Senufo mask he had just purchased. Within his perfect French, he had a slight accent that was vaguely familiar so I asked where he was from- Romania, he said. He had been living in France for 30 years. The day before, I spoke with a French woman who told me that France was dealing with huge waves of Eastern European immigrants. "From which countries?" I asked. "First the Romanians, then the Bulgarians, now the Ukrainians and the Georgians." she said. "Je ne sais plus ou on va dans ce pays si ca continue comme ca,"  is something I heard more than once, on the subject of immigration in ...

Another day in the Mission.  What these photos fail to convey are the glorious sounds coming out of each of these cars, cars rolling slowly through the streets of San Francisco. These men could be professional DJ's. They probably are. Funk, Rap, Soul, Blues, Rancheras.  The best party was in each car. And I have never seen cars so spotless. Not a crumb, or a hair, or a piece of paper or a fingerprint on the seats and the floors. Who would want to leave?

" liberté égalité fraternité, hiru gezur horiek egiak balite "  This is a Basque saying regarding France. “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, if only those three lies were truths!” When I was last in Paris, I showed a friend a photo I had just taken of lovers kissing at a café.   I didn’t get the shot I had hoped for, which was when the woman was still walking towards the man. I had stepped into the middle of the street, almost getting hit by a car, while trying to not be noticed.   My friend reacted with horror- I had no right to photograph people in public, he said. What if the man was cheating on his wife? I could ruin an entire marriage. They have laws about this in France, he tells me.   I have since learned that the punishment is one year in prison and 45,000 Euros. I ponder the irony that such laws exist in the country where Daguerre gave to the world the first photograph of a person (actually 2 people), on the Boulevard du Temple. Paris is the city w...

Brassai Andre Kertesz Henri Cartier Bresson Doisneau Aurélie Filippetti, the former French minister of culture has expressed that Article 9 is unacceptable with regards to photographs. “Without them, our society doesn’t have a face,” she said. “Because of this law, we run the risk of losing our memory.”  Doisneau’s “Baiser de L’Hotel de Ville” (1950) landed him in court decades after taking it. According to what I read in Wikipedia, Jean and Denise Lavergne erroneously believed they were the subjects and invoked their rights under the French privacy laws. Doisneau was forced to reveal he had asked the real couple to pose, after having seen them kiss spontaneously and not wanting to intrude. He won the court case. The woman in the photo, Francoise Bornet, said: " We didn't mind. We were used to kissing. We were doing it all the time then, it was delicious.”

Downtown Austin. When I returned to the US after photographing in Paris, I felt that I was in a freer place, artistically speaking. No longer would people yell at me for taking pictures in public, as the French often did. The French privacy laws have made the land of Doisneau and Cartier-Bresson a rather inhospitable place for that same type of street photography today. But, how interesting it is to come to Austin, Texas, which has changed dramatically in the 20 years since I last visited. One of the highlights for me was seeing the "First Photograph" which is enshrined at the Henry Ransom Center. I always teach my students about this image by Niepce, yet I had never seen it. It is kept behind glass and walls in its own “section” of a room, with guards close by, next to the Gutenberg Bible. I love the story of the making of this photograph as it shows the tenacity that it took to create an image, using materials such as bitumen and lavender oil, waiting for hours to make...