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Many Leave: Some Return

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Many Leave

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Some Return
 
Fascinating set of images. Were they boating or sailing or what?

Asher

Not boating, not sailing, just walking to the end of a breakwater (and back). The photos were chance occurrences. May aim was to take pictures of birds using an elderly Nikon 300mm, F 2.8, manual focus lens fitted with an extension that doubled the focal length.

Then I saw kids on the breakwater, leaving a daytime summer camp. Many of them had their heads down for reasons unknown (i.e., the first photo). Although seemingly not aboriginal, the head-down stance brought to mind aboriginal people relocated to a homeless shelter in the city from their home communities. It also brought to mind aboriginal kids relocated to an aboriginal high school in the city, about 10 of whom had recently drowned in rivers and the lake, whether because of homicide, suicide or accident, neither the police nor a subsequent public inquiry were able to determine. This scene evoked feelings of sorrow.

In contrast, the second photo is upbeat. Those kids returning to the summer camp hurry to get there. They represent to me a subset of wanderers returning to their home, to their roots, to their gods. The headland behind them is called the Sleeping Giant, correctly or incorrectly linked in popular culture with Ojibway mythology <http://Sleeping Giant Legend.>. The legend seemed appropriate to the image.

The preceding interpretation is, of course, relevant only to feelings evoked in me. A friend interpreted the images similarly, but relevant to refugee crises in various parts of the world. They are merely examples of the power of photos to transcend beyond their factual content if you let your imagination run free.

Cheers, Mike
 
Conceptually it seems great but the picture has been blurred, isn't it?

The shot was with what was effectively a 600mm lens on a handheld camera, Roshni. The focus was on people about 200m away, with the headland at least 20km behind them. So a narrow range of objects in focus is unsurprising. The concept came to full cognitive awareness after-the-photo but I experienced an emotive inkling at the time of shooting. Didn't Ancel Adams proclaim that there's "nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept"? To my admittedly imperfect knowledge, he didn't suggest the opposite. :)
Cheers, Mike
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Not boating, not sailing, just walking to the end of a breakwater (and back). The photos were chance occurrences. May aim was to take pictures of birds using an elderly Nikon 300mm, F 2.8, manual focus lens fitted with an extension that doubled the focal length.

Then I saw kids on the breakwater, leaving a daytime summer camp. Many of them had their heads down for reasons unknown (i.e., the first photo). Although seemingly not aboriginal, the head-down stance brought to mind aboriginal people relocated to a homeless shelter in the city from their home communities. It also brought to mind aboriginal kids relocated to an aboriginal high school in the city, about 10 of whom had recently drowned in rivers and the lake, whether because of homicide, suicide or accident, neither the police nor a subsequent public inquiry were able to determine. This scene evoked feelings of sorrow.

In contrast, the second photo is upbeat. Those kids returning to the summer camp hurry to get there. They represent to me a subset of wanderers returning to their home, to their roots, to their gods. The headland behind them is called the Sleeping Giant, correctly or incorrectly linked in popular culture with Ojibway mythology <http://Sleeping Giant Legend.>. The legend seemed appropriate to the image.

The preceding interpretation is, of course, relevant only to feelings evoked in me. A friend interpreted the images similarly, but relevant to refugee crises in various parts of the world. They are merely examples of the power of photos to transcend beyond their factual content if you let your imagination run free.

Mike,

The best pictures are in some way incomplete. Maggie Terlecki quotes Leonard Cohen,


"There's a crack, a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in!"


Making images totally self-explanatatory may satisfy folk who believe that



"A picture should speak for itself!"


is convenient for the viewer. However, when the viewer is attracted to art, confronted with a paradox or puzzle, then we get something more. We bring our own experience to the art. The work now becomes an "imaginorium" where we test assumptions and boundaries that we assumed were fixed.

When you are moved by the images to htink of the aboriginals humiliated, displaced and drowned, you validate Leonard Cohen's understanding that cracks do, indeed, let in light.

Asher
 
Mike,

The best pictures are in some way incomplete. Maggie Terlecki quotes Leonard Cohen,


"There's a crack, a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in!"


Making images totally self-explanatatory may satisfy folk who believe that



"A picture should speak for itself!"


is convenient for the viewer. However, when the viewer is attracted to art, confronted with a paradox or puzzle, then we get something more. We bring our own experience to the art. The work now becomes an "imaginorium" where we test assumptions and boundaries that we assumed were fixed.

When you are moved by the images to htink of the aboriginals humiliated, displaced and drowned, you validate Leonard Cohen's understanding that cracks do, indeed, let in light.

Asher

Absolutely, Asher. A photo is a form of storytelling. A story has more power if it stops just before the ending. That way, viewer/reader feels they author the ending themselves.

Cheers, Mike
 
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