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Getting from a personal memento or snapshot to something of wider value: ideas?

Sydney Rester

New member
I've decided to repurpose a copy of Sydney's original thread from here on the 70-200 f4.0L lens to ask new broader question: how do we go from the snapshots of our lives to images having more value to our culture irrespective of knowing the folk in the image. From, Sydney's many new posts, this, I believe can, perhaps, allow some greater benefit than just looking at how a lens performs. Of course it does well, it's an L lens from Canon! The same would hold true for most modern lenses! I know this is downright banditry on my part, but, I believe, Sydney will give us the O.K.


I had my hands on a rented 70-200 mm f/4 IS L today and I'm wondering how I did with it for a first outing. I was shooting at a crowded Halloweed carnival which made it rather difficult to take advantage of. I plan to take it to our off-leash dog park tomorrow for some real fun!

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Ken Tanaka

pro member
The last time I went to a "Halloweed carnival" was in college...and there certainly were no small children there. (Although there may, indeed, have been a guy dressed as a bunny...I'm not sure.)

These are clearly family memento snaps, regardless of the size and ownership of the lens used. I would have to have been partaking in a Halloweed party of my own to make any comments on them. What the heck could anyone say, anyway? They're mementos.
 

Rachel Foster

New member
Those are lovely family snapshots and I'm not sure anything can improve a memento.

Images that are shot for "art," journalism, or other reasons are critique-able. Family memories? Nope, those are precious, personal, and wonderful.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Shifting from the personal towards something representing more?

I had my hands on a rented 70-200 mm f/4 IS L today and I'm wondering how I did with it for a first outing. I was shooting at a crowded Halloweed carnival which made it rather difficult to take advantage of. I plan to take it to our off-leash dog park tomorrow for some real fun!

Sydney,

With this lens, as long as you point it at your subject in reasonable light, your picture will be perfectly in focus and well exposed, so the lens, as usual did well. Now, how about you?

Ken Tanaka;83613.......... said:
These are clearly family memento snaps, regardless of the size and ownership of the lens used. I would have to have been partaking in a Halloweed party of my own to make any comments on them. What the heck could anyone say, anyway? They're mementos.



4040657063_a22e4bc7e6_b.jpg




Well, Ken,

These are all mementos, but, taken away from the others, is this a little way on a path towards representing more than a snap of this family? I can imagine different times with different faces but the same feelings. So what makes such pictures transcendent and not just personal?

At the risk of critique myself here are two versions that someone might make taking the picture a little further away from the memento. The first is in B&W and focuses or her interaction with us.

4040657063_a22e4bc7e6_b_AK_B&W.jpg


Sydney Rester "Girl with Bunny's Ears" B&W edits ADK



This next variant, exaggerates color and tonal differences, making her challenge to us more personal and aggressive, as if she was older. Sometimes kids seem to have insight beyond their age and that's frightening!

4040657063_a22e4bc7e6_bColor_AK.jpg


Sydney Rester "Girl with Bunny's Ears" Edits ADK


These are suggestions of what might be possible in preparation of an image for sharing. The photographer emphasizing some elements and masking others, (so molding our experience towards an abstraction), might get us beyond the snapshot.

I'm not suggesting this transforms the snap to a gallery photograph, but, I believe it can be part of the process. Here, the vision before the snap started that possibility. Refining this seems to me profitable.

Asher
 
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Ken Tanaka

pro member
It is a bit of piracy, Asher. Personally, I believe that we should leave the original thread alone. Perhaps someone will offer Sydey suggestions that others cannot/will not.

But the subject of personal snapshots versus other types of photography (which is NOT what Sydney asked) is a very broad one, perhaps far too broad and deep for a photo forum. There is plenty of academic material available on the subject for anyone genuinely interested in understanding where such distinctions are drawn.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
It is a bit of piracy, Asher. Personally, I believe that we should leave the original thread alone. Perhaps someone will offer Sydey suggestions that others cannot/will not.

Sydney had posted many, many threads with a lot of similar material. We corresponded privately to get some focus and value from her flow of numerous pictures. This small series I sought to rescue as it raises the very issue of "being just a memento". Here we have a lady, new to photography who photographs what's so dear to here. There's no pretense, arrogance, use of other folks ideas, just her eye in the viewfinder from her chosen position in her world of loved beings. She's driven by a need to treasure what's alive around her. That's a unique and honest feeling she has. I cannot believe that out of this we cannot have art that means a lot to us, beyond her own personal cares. I don't mean that snapping enough will give a photograph more worthy to us all. But I do believe there's a spark of some ability to see things beyond the mere snap of a moment. That spark might need educating. We need that ourselves. Sydney's work might provide a great and fresh series where one might observe what goes into the development towards the picture we value more.

But the subject of personal snapshots versus other types of photography (which is NOT what Sydney asked) is a very broad one, perhaps far too broad and deep for a photo forum. There is plenty of academic material available on the subject for anyone genuinely interested in understanding where such distinctions are drawn.

Ken,

Not infrequently you have material to serve as groundwork for subjects that might at first, confound us. Any that come to mind on the subject of "transcending the memento or the personal photograph", would be appreciated.

Asher
 
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Ken Tanaka

pro member
Very well. Put simply, the "snapshot" is a photograph recorded unskillfully with the primary objective being to record a personal moment or encounter. Composition, journalistic agenda, and seriality do not underlie the snapshot's intentions; they're all about capturing the "moment" ("The Kodak Moment" as Kodak coined it.)

The concept of such casual photographs dates back to the very early 20th century when Kodak introduced the mass-produced handheld camera.

In contrast, photography that's provoked by broader or deeper intentions and is carefully composed and technically well recorded is outside the realm of the snapshot. The exception here is the application of the snapshot aesthetic in fine art photography. Some examples would be works by Nan Goldin (although, having met her, I'm not at all certain she really knows or cares how to use a camera), William Eggleston, and Garry Winogrand. Their works often look banal or generally like amateur crap...yet the effect is intentional.

Fundamentally, the aesthetic style is not really the point here. I could be very mistaken, as I've seen similar images held high as intellectual accomplishments. But Sydney's images looks like family snaps and, as such, critique in any other context would be pointless and pretentious. (And, no, conversion to b&w doesn't make them anything higher than what they are.)

So the difference between snapshots and more earnest forms of photography, expressed simply, is conceptual intentions.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Very well. Put simply, the "snapshot" is a photograph recorded unskillfully with the primary objective being to record a personal moment or encounter. Composition, journalistic agenda, and seriality do not underlie the snapshot's intentions; they're all about capturing the "moment" ("The Kodak Moment" as Kodak coined it.)

.............. But Sydney's images looks like family snaps and, as such, critique in any other context would be pointless and pretentious. (And, no, conversion to b&w doesn't make them anything higher than what they are.)

So the difference between snapshots and more earnest forms of photography, expressed simply, is conceptual intentions.
Thanks Ken for delineating the sides of the argument so well. I find your limits instructive and helpful to me. As you already said, this is a complex subject. Still, in this case, we have a clean an unadulterated example of a new photographer making at least one interesting picture that one must admit has an edge over most mementos.

Now let's imagine that Sydney decides, at some later time, to revisit her photographs, and, now knowing about esthetics and expression of her own imagination, remolded a careful selection of her original snap shots to her will. She could do that by simply selecting from amongst the heap of look-a-like snaps or actually rework them. She could do the Dadaistic thing and repurpose her newly found pieces of imagery. What then?

If, in some way or other, the work is repurposed, is it not now separate from the mere snapshot?

After all had she just presented the one B&W derivative, and not the many originals, who would have said it's just a memento?

Asher
 
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Ken Tanaka

pro member
...

Now let's imagine that Sydney decides, at some later time, to revisit her photographs, and, now knowing about esthetics and expression of her own imagination, remolded a careful selection of her original snap shots to her will. She could do that by simply selecting from amongst the heap of look-a-like snaps or actually rework them. She could do the Dadaistic thing and repurpose her newly found pieces of imagery. What then?

If, in some way or other, the work is repurposed, is it not now separate from the mere snapshot?

After all had she just presented the one B&W derivative, and not the many originals, who would have said it's just a memento?

Asher

Sydney is free to do whatever she pleases with her photographs. If some gallery decides to make her their star du jour and promote her personal snaps as a high culture body of work, more power to her. This happens all the time. Case in point: Right now the Art Institute of Chicago is running its annual On The Scene exhibition featuring several "up and coming" photographic artists. One, Jason Lazarus, is showing a collection of found family photos (doubtless, snapshots) each with their image sides turned toward the wall. Instead, Lazarus shows us only the personal annotations on their backs.

So who's to say that Sydney's "Halloweed" snaps won't one day be considered (or at least presented as) high art? One thing I can declare, though: nobody will give a rat's caboose what camera and lens she used...which is the context of her original question.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Sydney is free to do whatever she pleases with her photographs.
If some gallery decides to make her their star du jour and promote her personal snaps as a high culture body of work, more power to her. This happens all the time. Case in point: Right now the Art Institute of Chicago is running its annual On The Scene exhibition featuring several "up and coming" photographic artists. One, Jason Lazarus, is showing a collection of found family photos (doubtless, snapshots) each with their image sides turned toward the wall. Instead, Lazarus shows us only the personal annotations on their backs.

Ken,

I enjoyed reading about the current exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. How Apt! I wish I was able to pop over. I wonder whether it will travel too?

Still, in reference to Sydney's work, it's us, not the a gallery, who are experiencing her pictures right now, (and not the interesting writing inverse side of the print). Are we able to discover, among the mementos, a picture that goes beyond the snapshot? I think this one, might be a candidate worthy of consideration. It's not technically outstanding in preparation, but it does seem to have value beyond the specifics of the image.

Asher
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Interesting discussion…

You seem to have forgoten that Sydney has RENT the lens, I suppose for testing it, hence, as far as I understand, the post with these pictures.

By the way, how can you be sure that Sydney is a woman? (serious question, without any ulterior motive)
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Nicolas,

We've been in communication and Sydney shared that with me! She's a great addition to our community.

Asher
 

Alain Briot

pro member
The first step is to have as a goal to do photographs that are more than lens tests... which here seems to have been the goal.

Then the goal has to be other than documentation of an event, a person and a costume, which here again seems to be the goal.

It's all about goals. Goals define what photographs look like.

As example, in my work my goal is to express my personal vision of and my emotional response to the scenes I photograph. I have no interest in documentation or in representing "reality" whatever that may be.

ESML-Bristlecone-Trunk.jpg

Bristlecone Trunk
 

Sydney Rester

New member
Sydney,

With this lens, as long as you point it at your subject in reasonable light, your picture will be perfectly in focus and well exposed, so the lens, as usual did well. Now, how about you?





4040657063_a22e4bc7e6_b.jpg




Well, Ken,

These are all mementos, but, taken away from the others, is this a little way on a path towards representing more than a snap of this family? I can imagine different times with different faces but the same feelings. So what makes such pictures transcendent and not just personal?

At the risk of critique myself here are two versions that someone might make taking the picture a little further away from the memento. The first is in B&W and focuses or her interaction with us.

4040657063_a22e4bc7e6_b_AK_B&W.jpg


Sydney Rester "Girl with Bunny's Ears" B&W edits ADK



This next variant, exaggerates color and tonal differences, making her challenge to us more personal and aggressive, as if she was older. Sometimes kids seem to have insight beyond their age and that's frightening!

4040657063_a22e4bc7e6_bColor_AK.jpg


Sydney Rester "Girl with Bunny's Ears" Edits ADK


These are suggestions of what might be possible in preparation of an image for sharing. The photographer emphasizing some elements and masking others, (so molding our experience towards an abstraction), might get us beyond the snapshot.

I'm not suggesting this transforms the snap to a gallery photograph, but, I believe it can be part of the process. Here, the vision before the snap started that possibility. Refining this seems to me profitable.

Asher

Asher, you've hit the nail on the head with the second picture, where " her challenge to us more personal and aggressive, as if she was older. Sometimes kids seem to have insight beyond their age and that's frightening!"

This little girl is growing up lightning fast as her mother (my sister) died in May. Even when the kids are happy at play, the camera catches the full gamut of emotion in these kids. Amazing.
 

Ken Tanaka

pro member
Harry Callahan, one of my favorite photographers of the 20th century, had many examples of sliding between very formal images and formal images that mimicked a snapshot aesthetic.

This page on the Museum of Contemporary Photography site features a good example. The top image is a very stylized and carefully planned portrait of his wife, Eleanor. The third image again features Eleanor, and Callahan's daughter, in a snapshot-style composition. Here's another example of Callahan using a snapshot aesthetic in what was actually a very formal body or work.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
The first step is to have as a goal to do photographs that are more than lens tests... which here seems to have been the goal.

Then the goal has to be other than documentation of an event, a person and a costume, which here again seems to be the goal.

It's all about goals. Goals define what photographs look like.

Alain,

I think that as a generalization it might be most often true that purpose-driven pictures are narrowly directed to fulfill some expectation and hardly constitute art. It might seem true, but as truisms go, this one too is not, in reality, reliable for any particular instance. Each time we consider a work we have to ask, "What thoughts and creativity does the artist embed in the physics of the thing?"

In this case, so she tests a lens. She is not actually a lens-tester! She used no charts, not even cat's whiskers, so it wouldn't even pass as a test in http://www.fredmiranda.com! Then, if we're to remove from art, "documentation of an event", or "a person" then much of the art in the Louvre, the National Gallery in London and other fine institutions would have to be pulled down from their walls. Documentation of events, unless done for insurance, forensic or scientific purpose are great candidates for artistic expression. In fact for a long time, art served either to glorify the events of state or those of the Bible.

God2-Sistine_Chapel.png


Michaelangelo: Sistene Chapel: God Wikipedia commons image

So, neither goal purpose nor function disqualifies any work as art! If so, portraits, Michaelangelo's ceiling in the Sistine Chapel and many other church Nativity Scenes in oils or and precious frescoes would be immediately disqualified!


As example, in my work my goal is to express my personal vision of and my emotional response to the scenes I photograph. I have no interest in documentation or in representing "reality" whatever that may be.

ESML-Bristlecone-Trunk.jpg

Bristlecone Trunk


Alain,

Obviously you had no request from an insurance company or homeland security to document the beautiful natural scenes and monuments that drive your work. You have a passion that's an engine behind your intent. You modify what you show to your will in order evoke the experience you wish to command with your ideas, skills and presentation.

So, yes, your photography is, from the outset, driven by art to become art.

Still, allow me to trespass a little an take the role, just for the sake of this discussion only, as the devil's advocate. So we can look at possible degradation of pure artistic intent. So we can, reasonably, also ask, "What are you going to do with this fine photograph?" Likely it's for sale. So that could be considered a motive as you address your following, your market. Already, you too, perhaps might not be unscathed by the very end use of your work! In fact, you trekking out in in the Arizona desert with all your photography gear might be no less under the yoke of the "end use" as Michaelangelo was, laboring upside down, painting his fresco to the service of the Church. I'm not saying that your artwork is influenced at all by the goal of "selling", but it is indeed possible.

So putting aside, for now, the confounding Michaelangelo motivation factors, I argue that Sydney's primary motivation is not testing any camera but the glorification of life. That's her mental concept that she struggles to engrave in her pictures. She's just learning.


4040657063_a22e4bc7e6_b.jpg




Still, maybe she did actually succeed a tad in the one I pointed out where the subject "is as a woman beyond her age". When I made my comment, I didn't know that the child had just lost her mother to illness! When a work is imbued with a mental construct like this, it can, if the photograph is developed with sufficient skill, rise to something beyond those we'd pass over as a "snap" or else mere "documentation". In this case, I cannot dismiss her picture because she says she was "testing the lens". If she had been "testing a gun" against a robber, he'd have been dead, very dead. That's how I feel.
 
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Sydney Rester

New member
Sydney had posted many, many threads with a lot of similar material. We corresponded privately to get some focus and value from her flow of numerous pictures. This small series I sought to rescue as it raises the very issue of "being just a memento". Here we have a lady, new to photography who photographs what's so dear to here. There's no pretense, arrogance, use of other folks ideas, just her eye in the viewfinder from her chosen position in her world of loved beings. She's driven by a need to treasure what's alive around her. That's a unique and honest feeling she has. I cannot believe that out of this we cannot have art that means a lot to us, beyond her own personal cares. I don't mean that snapping enough will give a photograph more worthy to us all. But I do believe there's a spark of some ability to see things beyond the mere snap of a moment. That spark might need educating. We need that ourselves. Sydney's work might provide a great and fresh series where one might observe what goes into the development towards the picture we value more.



Ken,

Not infrequently you have material to serve as groundwork for subjects that might at first, confound us. Any that come to mind on the subject of "transcending the memento or the personal photograph", would be appreciated.

Asher

Asher - OK, first, wow - "She's driven by a need to treasure what's alive around her" I threw myself into photography after my sister died unexpectedly 5 months ago. I never thought of my drive to do this as a drive to capture everything around me I love that's still living (especially her children), but you are so RIGHT.

Now seems a good time to ask what I asked you last week: How do you feel about photographs that seem to evoke powerful emotions in people even when YOU know they are technically flawed? This is a capture of my niece at play 2 months after my sister died, and it never ceases to amaze me what the camera catches in her eyes no matter how happy she seems just the second before the snap. This one has so impressed my friends, but I see focus/DOF and post processing problems. Do you just enjoy the fact that people enjoy it, and note the things to do better next time?

4031735542_66fcca128f.jpg
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Asher - OK, first, wow - "She's driven by a need to treasure what's alive around her" I threw myself into photography after my sister died unexpectedly 5 months ago. I never thought of my drive to do this as a drive to capture everything around me I love that's still living (especially her children), but you are so RIGHT.

Now seems a good time to ask what I asked you last week: How do you feel about photographs that seem to evoke powerful emotions in people even when YOU know they are technically flawed? This is a capture of my niece at play 2 months after my sister died, and it never ceases to amaze me what the camera catches in her eyes no matter how happy she seems just the second before the snap. This one has so impressed my friends, but I see focus/DOF and post processing problems. Do you just enjoy the fact that people enjoy it, and note the things to do better next time?

4031735542_66fcca128f.jpg

Sydney Rester: Untitled


Sydney,

In a way, this picture is like news photography, catching emotions that evoke reaction of empathy and compassion and thoughts of tragedy and unfairness of life. The more compelling the mage, the less craft in the work seems to matter.

kent-state-shooting.jpg


Pulitzer Prize winning photo Kent State, Akron, Ohio, May 4, 1970, Kent State Massacre Source

Description: Mary Ann Vecchio gestures and screams as she kneels by the body of a student, Jeffrey Miller, lying face down on the campus of Kent State University, in Kent, Ohio. On publication, the image was retouched to remove the fencepost above Vecchio's head. Source:© 1970 Valley News-Dispatch, Date: 1970-05-04, Author: John Paul Filo, who was a journalism student at Kent State University at the time (Source)

With your niece, her loss is readable but not, perhaps on as horrific a scale as the famous Kent State iconic picture. But are they works of art? Is it just news reporting and happening to be there? Does that exclude a snap from being more than that? That's the question. As Ken has pointed out, we expect some mental constructs to intentionally drive a picture making it to what one directs with the artist's skill. For the Ken State picture, that instantly became a symbol of international importance and conscience. But what about your shot? What about that simpler personal shot. The answer is perhaps in the long term body of work that buttresses an individual photograph. That way we can read language of the person in their pictures. And this is complex. We really don't know exactly what art is. we can describe the contents of museums and analyze the contents of collections, but we cannot, as yet, fully define art in a rigorous way. I don't know the full answer as my statements are really explorations.

If you think about your motivation and so refine your choices, then I believe, you're on the right path. However, whether you have all the tools and talent, is early to judge. It's a lot of work ahead of you and we don't know yet where any photograph will end up. So just do it and have satisfaction from your efforts!

Asher
 

Sydney Rester

New member
This has been a most interesting, most enlightening discussion. I suppose I should say that I have a 2 clear goals with my pictures of my world of nieces and pets, but let's talk about the nieces. First I aim to capture the vibrance and life of the things I hold dear that are still with me.

There is nothing like having your 35 year old sister die in her sleep to make you appreciate every moment, and if my pictures are only momentos now, I'm ok with that as I learn more of the craft.

The other is to chart a journey through their grief on film. I want to see that moment when the sadness leaves their eyes. For now I'm capturing as many moments as I can because it tells me volumes about how they are doing.

I will try not to burden you with momentos but rather share photographs. I just wanted to explain in my words where I'm coming from.
 
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Jim Galli

Member
I will try not to burden you with momentos but rather share photographs.

More memento's please. I love the picture. Life is so precious and fragile. All I can tell you is Maddie will grow up and she'll "borrow" the expensive 70 - 200mm APO whatever-it-is and forget to return it. Don't ask me how I know this, but by then you'll be making un-apologetically beautiful images with the plastic gyppo 18 - 55mm that came on the camera.

TinaPam.jpg

tina and pam

Here's what my early work looked like. Feel better? But it was art because I used Velvia. The little snot on the left is who got away with my lens. She gave me a grandson though, so even steven.
 

Sydney Rester

New member
More memento's please. I love the picture. Life is so precious and fragile. All I can tell you is Maddie will grow up and she'll "borrow" the expensive 70 - 200mm APO whatever-it-is and forget to return it. Don't ask me how I know this, but by then you'll be making un-apologetically beautiful images with the plastic gyppo 18 - 55mm that came on the camera.

TinaPam.jpg

tina and pam

Here's what my early work looked like. Feel better? But it was art because I used Velvia. The little snot on the left is who got away with my lens. She gave me a grandson though, so even steven.

Thank you, Jim. Maddie is a carbon copy of her mother so I'm extremely driven to capture her on film. It's uncanny, gut-wrenching, and life affirming all at the same time. *That* is why I picked up a camera in the first place. Whether I'll ever be taking images suitable for this board I don't know ... but I'm not putting the camera down :)
 

Jim Galli

Member
Thank you, Jim. Maddie is a carbon copy of her mother so I'm extremely driven to capture her on film. It's uncanny, gut-wrenching, and life affirming all at the same time. *That* is why I picked up a camera in the first place. Whether I'll ever be taking images suitable for this board I don't know ... but I'm not putting the camera down :)

BTW, back to your original question. The bokeh in the out of focus areas on this lens are nothing special. I would try several and look at the out of focus for silky smooth. I have a 300 f4 for the Nikon that has spoiled me badly.
 

Rachel Foster

New member
Sydney, I think "suitable for this board" is a moot point. Will you produce images that get rave reviews? Who knows. Who cares? I would suggest the more relevant questions are these. Will you produce images important to you? Will you enjoy the process? Will you learn from OPF? If you answer yes to (any?) of these, then that's all that matters.

My $.02 worth.
 

Ken Tanaka

pro member
That's a wonderful image of your niece, Sydney. Lots of life there. Jim provides a good comparison image here. Jim's shot of his daughter (and wife?) is a terrific, happy memento snapshot that obviously, and understandably, give him joy many years after its capture. Your image of your niece will, too, but it also flirts with higher and broader aesthetic value. (The sepia toning limits its possibilities.)
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
That's a wonderful image of your niece, Sydney. Lots of life there. Jim provides a good comparison image here. Jim's shot of his daughter (and wife?) is a terrific, happy memento snapshot that obviously, and understandably, give him joy many years after its capture. Your image of your niece will, too, but it also flirts with higher and broader aesthetic value. (The sepia toning limits its possibilities.)

Well, Ken and Jim,

Thanks for bringing us back down to earth. We must not ever forget the relationships around us and take noone fro granted, not even ourselves. If there is no living thing to hug, help, share with or cherish then what would become of us?

Mementos affirm our life, photographs, (the ones that we want to outlast us in galleries), might represent, in some part, our our desire to defeat death!

Although it's interesting, especially for me, to muse about getting to "art", there's no greater value than the preciousness of life, Sydney's niece, your daughter, grandkids and the more snaps of them, the better.

Asher
 
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