Portraits

These two images represent different approaches to the portrait. They're both studied and deliberate in their own way. They seem intent on capturing some essential quality of their subjects but are still only an allusion to the original. The photographer's raw intention in these pictures is very strong.

I've always been interested in the other side, so to speak, of the photographs I've found. There's a dialogue between the photographer and the subject and the viewer and the image that will go on forever. The image itself doesn't possess the primacy of this relationship and the context it lends.

USA

I see the ‘American Dream’ reflected strongly in a lot of the photographs I find, particularly in these ones. There’s the early morning, pinkish light on the two men in the first, the neatly barren lawn in the second, that obvious landmark. There’s something about being a keeper of these photographs too that relates to this idea for me. I feel that the Dream is about moving forward and progress. It's about the holiness of place and the even holierness of the quest for place. The photograph is proof! You don’t need to take a picture of it to know you’ve seen the Washington monument but maybe you need that record, that evidence not only of your presence but of your own hand in doing the taking. Do you think there’s a place in the paradigm of the American Dream for remembering? How does it fit? Powerful people aren’t often tourists. Why is the travel photo the particular domain of the middle class? Or is it at all?

And isn't that pink T-shirt in the last photo and the posture of the two men in the first one or the crispness of the ponchoed fella's pants just so beautiful?

Lemme introduce a little of what I'm getting at here.

I have to say. These scans don’t cut it. They’re nothing like the thrill of opening up an album in a thrift store or a dumpster or chasing a piece of paper down the street, or wiping mud and dusting dirt from one lying on the corner; the images here aren’t even like pawing through an inexplicably grimy bin of photographs at an antique store, finding just the right one and shelling out the dough (a quarter, fifty cents, a dollar). That’s what’s so difficult about them, and why they’ve become a strange burden to me. I feel responsible for the lives represented here even while I’m not sure there are lives represented at all. I wonder if it's naive to assume that such brief moments really do offer any real portrait of the time, place, memory, and mark they portray.

The good ones are sensitive. They’re are imbued with the subjectivity of framing, subject, and lighting as well as the romance of their finding and their distance (in time, place, and character) to my own life. I really love them. Big time. I’ll show them to anyone who asks or who doesn’t. I’ll pull out boxes and folders and spread them out on my bed or the living room floor. I’ll explain how I found them and everytime I find a new one I’ll think “This is it, I’ve finally found the only one I ever could. This is the mother lode, for real.”

They’re personal. I don’t want to filter them through other media. I don’t want to exploit them. But, part of the burden is that I might be the only person who holds what these photographs hold. Part of the burden is an idea of memory as a memorial. That said, and getting back to the bit about the scans, If you want to see these in real life, to hold them and notice the things about them that make them worthwhile, to speculate and drink a cup of something at my house, let’s do it. The kitchen table can be cleared as a stage anytime and whatever’s on the living room floor can be kicked away.

Sara