How I show I care

Different ways of expressing tenda-ness

Friends

Here...just stand in front of the...yeah, that's great, ok!

RE: kids

I love the shadows in pictures of children (kids being a very common subject of home movies and photographs, check out This episode of 'This American Life and this documentary from folkstreams.net, a website I just discovered and can't wait to explore more, for evidence and insights on this effect)

Inherent in a picture of a child, and part of the reason so many are taken, is the knowledge that they're growing and this captured moment is profoundly fleeting. Shadows talk about time and growth, throughout a day, throughout a life, in a second.

kids

they're old now.

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.

vernacular moments

What can you do with moments that shouldn't have been moments in the first place? What does it mean now that that hazy little guy and that acre of white wall are monuments?

super sleuthin'

Front

Back

This last image raises some issues that I think are pretty central to the discussion of found photos. I hadn't read the back of this image carefully before but it could give the full name of the woman in this picture. I almost feel like I'm learning too much now. The fact that I can talk about them, try to analyze them, and fall in a weird kind of love with the characters I see in pictures makes it easy to forget that these are real people and these are isolated, sometimes accidental views into their lives that I've stumbled upon.

I think the fact that the information here isn't explicit is what I'm uncomfortable with. "Annette and Rochay" is written on the back of the other image. I found the photos in the same box. The name 'Annette' appears on the back of another image and I assume that it's her son pictured on the front. It may be logical that the little boy is a slightly older 'Rochay' but there's still a level of faith involved here and a long thread of my own assumptions.

Is the viewing of a found photograph always uninvited?

This post on one of my favorite blogs, Big Happy Funhouse, goes into another, seedier aspect of this issue. What responsibility to people's privacy does a collector of found photographs have?