Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Looking For The Picture Within

The new scanner, which can handle my old medium format negatives, allows me to go travelling through photographs I took thirty years or so ago. It also allows me to play one of my favourite games : looking for the picture within. The picture on the left was taken in Paris, thirty or so years ago. The selective enlargement - the picture within - has all the atmosphere of a busy Paris street scene and a little bit more. It is a one act play; a piece of two dimensional monochrome performance art. What photography does better than anything else is freeze a moment in time; preserve a collection of emotions, movements and interactions in photographic aspic. I can happily spend hours scanning and dissecting, looking for shapes and trails : looking for the picture within.

14 comments:

  1. An interesting shot and it has a look of being European (as opposed to English). I wonder what they are talking about.
    I can spend hours and hours viewing old photos and wondering about the people in them, their lives, relationships in the photo and then what became of them. :)

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  2. Which Erminus is that?

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  3. You are so right about photography and how good it must feel to be able to resurrect your old photos. I have always shied away from taking people but they really do make a photo come alive.

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  4. Very short stories, or very brief one-act plays. I like your description of what you see in these pictures within. I've never taken a lot of people pictures, but I do love details in any subject matter. I do like the play of erminus/terminus. It adds an almost existential aspect to the photo. Or maybe that's just me.

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  5. You're right, the crop is a much more interesting photo. I've always found that a good crop can make the difference between a pedestrian snapshot and a work of art.

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  6. I certainly agree with Roy. Sometimes "the picture within" is THE picture.

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  7. And isn't it so remarkable that there so often is a picture within - I think so anyway. I couldn't have caught some of the things which are in the background, if I had tried.

    And it shows how much we miss as we bumble unthinkingly through life, methinks!

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  8. You're right to look within Alan.We should do it more often. Like Lisa I too wondered what they were talking about.

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  9. This one also looks as if it could be from a spy movie. They are discussing some plot, no doubt. For some reason it reminds me of that movie, The Conversation.

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  10. Great idea. Yes this was an interesting group of people within a photo.

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  11. What a wonderful way to describe it!

    I do that myself, usually looking for greater detail on a long shot of some place or person.

    But I never thought to describe it that way.

    Dee at Shakin' the Family Tree

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  12. Alan, I feel the same way. At first, my attention was drawn to the character in the sunglasses, but soon I was wondering what brand of cigarette the man in the group was smoking.

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