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. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Which Erminus is that?

    ReplyDelete
  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.

    ReplyDelete
  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.

    ReplyDelete
  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.

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

    ReplyDelete
  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!

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

    ReplyDelete
  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.

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

    ReplyDelete
  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

    ReplyDelete
  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.

    ReplyDelete

Grey And Great