October | 2017 | Welcome!

About my snaps…

Recently I was told that my photographs are becoming increasingly abstract. Whoa! “Hmm,” I said for as long as I could hold that note, not knowing whether to follow up with “Thanks” or “What does that mean?” or even the ever so evasive “O, really” followed by an awkwardly expressed request for elucidation. Did abstract as used here mean unreal or without feeling or hard to identify with? Was it code for artistic or stupid, something better or, G-d forbid, worse?

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My photos show whatever it was enticed me to make them in the first place, whatever it was that just grabbed me. Each begins with what the camera recorded. That is only the beginning. As crucial to the finished product as the initial exposure is the considerable effort spent post-processing. The goal: to bring the machine-made visual representation into line with the emotional event inciting the trigger being pressed.

Still, for all the cropping and color enhancement and contrast adjusting and intensification of highlights and shadows and warmth, a face remains a face, a window filled with reflections is still that, the intersecting planes of urban architecture are never other than buildings and every selfie still looks like me.

An interjection here that may be of some use: Yesterday I saw a feature film from 2005 or 06 called Fur: an imagined biography of Diane Arbus. Everyone from Arbus’ conventional family to the mysterious, fur-covered man who would lead her into the dark world she pursued until her suicide was abstracted, drawn in emotionally- charged caricature as were the environments in which the action took place. Everything was ultimately more than real.

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Here are some new snaps. I’d very much like to know your responses to them.