Martin,
You asked for my comments and I posed two choices you might have made in getting to where you did with the picture. You have claimed ownership of all the marks as you say, "they have minor roles to play."
If the principal guiding motivation is the "concrete chasm" aligning with the upper visible church structure, then the boldest feature of the picture, the horizontal black line cutting through the geometric and otherwise striking tower piercing the blue sky countermands your intent as we're very much distracted.
If your intent is to be realized, I'd have managed somehow to get the picture and have the so obviously dominating black against white graphic attraction excluded.
If that eye-catching central feature of the black line transversing the white steeple
is indeed an important and required feature, then your narrative is moved from "the interface between the chasm below and the white church above" to the motif of "transverse obstructions": the many wires in addition to the dominant one and the barbed wire all signify conflict and social disorder.
Although you took ownership of the so-called, "minor players", you didn't claim affinity with the concept of the "church facing a hostile landscape in these current times". So I'm perplexed.
The escape to this conundrum is your establishment of your own coding for your own photographs of this kind which we'll learn to follow. So, in this case, if your, "minor players always do some intended work" rule is valid, we should see that benefit in further work in this character.
Your job, as an artist is to make your photograph serve
your purposes and express your own imagination. When you release it to the world, then we have to either understand your motifs or else just let it speak for itself. I cannot help but compare this photograph with the pristine white Baptist church
here, as that sort of memory of a grass roots Christian house of worship is iconic. Whether we realize it or not, that's part of our language of references used to interpret new sights set before our eyes.
I do like your picture and the thinking that went into planning to express your imagination. I'm happier now to know how to read your picture according to
your intent! Still, at the risk of being resented strongly, I'd humbly petition for more persistent ingenuity in setting up the shot to remove distractions. This could really open up your carefully embedded ideation to the ordinary untrained viewer.
Thanks for challenging me to comment on a picture I'd obviously held off touching on. Your forbearance on my confrontative approach to your significant work is appreciated. Most folk would just say, "Well that's my picture as I want it, so go **** yourself!"
Asher
