Simultaneously intimate and anonymous

<p>An interesting topic that touches on my own take on my “casual” or “documentary” portraiture. To me, anyone looking at a photo I took of one of my family members or friends, is anonymous: They don’t know this person. I typically do portraits by carrying a camera around and snapping photos during back yard barbeques, family events, such as reunions, etc. People typically get used to me taking pictures and tend to be relaxed if I approach them or if I am standing nearby focusing my camera on them. To me, this achieves a certain intimacy, because my subjects end up not “posing” as much as just noticing me or making a visual connection with the camera. In other words, I’m trying not to interrupt their “flow” of what they are doing except for a 1/30 of a second or so. My people folders are full of examples of what I am talking about. Here is one example.</p><div></div>

<p>I understand Marc that your, our, deep feeling evoked by "Tomoko in Her Bath" by W. Eugene Smith wouldn't be diminished if we didn't know her name. And yes it is a posed picture, but both posed and candid photos have subjects that are either named subjects or unnamed subjects. Anonymous means unnamed. Anonymous doesn't mean posed, it doesn't mean un-posed. There isn't a paradox in saying posed intimacy or un-posed intimacy. There may or may not be a paradox in saying 'simultaneously intimate and anonymous'. To determine if there is a paradox or not we have to explore those words by their definitions.</p>

<p>The definition of intimacy is complex and nuanced. The definition of anonymous is straight forward: it means unnamed. It doesn't mean unknown subject. Unknown, like intimacy, is a matter of degree. The degree to which we know someone is intimacy. EG, I know so and so. Do you really? I know your name I know more about you than if I didn't. But I don't know everything, and compared to what I do know your name may not be very important. Or it may be.</p>

<p>In "Tomoko in Her Bath" we know her name and from that picture's publication we know that her injuries were caused by a community's employer. Government was complicit also. World awareness was done by putting a human face on both victim and victimizer, social action resulted, in part because of international condemnation, in a large part because Japanese leaders had been shamed by that picture. I say shamed in cultural context: generally speaking, in Japan you can endure anything except shame. To state that extremely, you would rather die than experience public humiliation. Public praise is a form of humiliation to that sort of mind set. Taking the last piece of anything on a plate in a meal with others is shameful, so the last piece is endlessly divided and offered to everyone, the last piece is hot potato because if you do take it (and we do unwittingly) it is shameful and you can endure anything except shame. "Tomoko in Her Bath" is a public shaming by the less powerful of the powerful. That's taboo, it just isn't normally done in a society where mutual respect and a degree of obeisance is a sort of social lubricant. To name Tomoko is to name and shame her victimizers and to understand Tomoko fully in a social context, rooted in time and place by her name.</p>

 

<p>Steve Murray - "To me, anyone looking at a photo I took of one of my family members or friends, is anonymous: They don’t know this person."</p>

<p>Here's a second dictionary definition for anonymous: having no outstanding, individual, or unusual features; unremarkable or impersonal.</p>

<p>With the word anonymous, what is unknown isn't the person, what is unknown is their name. Alternatively, anonymous means unremarkable or impersonal, having no features that stand out from the features of anyone else, nothing individually identifying.</p>

<p>Posed photos can look unnatural compared to candid shots. We like photos that look more natural. But there are a lot of photos of people who look natural and are still anonymous: even though they are un-posed or natural looking. Even so they still can have no features that stand out from the features of <em>anyone</em> else that is photographed more naturally than if they were just posed. Even so there may be nothing to identify them individually, identify them more intimately.</p>

<p>We all have hands. What do my hands say about me? What could a photographer make my hands say about me? Without my hands being made to say something about the me the photographer knows, they might as well be a picture of your hands.</p>

<p>A agree that in your photo Steve, there is a hint of a complex personality. I don't think there is a device in the photo that would clue us into what exactly is hinted at. The O'Keeffe photo uses the hands to hint and to make use of what we know about O'Keeffe to make a more pointed statement. With your shot, we know there is something there, we just don't have a clue as to what it is in the photo. Getting another clue in there may have taken some props and posing.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Julie - "Also, as Jeff Spirer has noted, W. Eugene Smith was not only not an "anonymous" photographer,..."</p>

<p>Smith wasn't an "anonymous" photographer because we know his name.</p>

<p>Julie continued: "..., he was even beyond Mark in his approach in that he had a very strong agenda which he was pushing in his photo essays."</p>

<p>Julie, was the fact that Smith indeed pushed an agenda with photo essays lessen your enjoyment of his photos? Does just the fact that Smith had an agenda create a noise for you that is so loud that it get's in the way of how you <em>prefer</em> to evaluate his work? In other words, your objection isn't to Smith's agenda. Whatever Smith's agenda was, it stands or falls on its own merits if I understand you correctly. Is it the mere fact that he had any agenda that gets in the way of how you prefer to assess this or that particular photo of his? Too much agenda coloring for your taste? Does it just make you explode sometimes when someone does that?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Um, so Charles, an effective portrait requires a number of "clues" and a head shot isn't enough? Eyes, expression, posture are not enough? First I heard of that!!! You're too much "in your head" Charles! Get out of your head and shift to your heart (emotions). In your analysis, Steve McCurry's "Afghan Girl" is missing some elements. Too bad, because its rated as one of the 25 most famous photos in the world.</p>

<p>Good choice. At the time, "Afghan Girl" was a photo of an unnamed subject. Perfect. Is there more there than eyes, an expression, her posture? Were her eyes, expression, and posture enough, or is there more there than eyes, expression, and posture? Is there more there that would get me out of my head and make me care?</p>

<p>It's on the cover of National Geographic. It has a title. It has an agenda. It places the girl in relation to what isn't in the picture, world affairs. She is specifically used to represent young girls in her country. There is much there to make me look and care besides eyes, expression, posture.</p>

<p>I have a heart. Here its expressed. It works for me. It was taken with intent to express emotion. Does it? If not, why can't you see it? Possibly because I'm not very good at speaking with a visual language?<br>

<a href="/photo/14270713">http://www.photo.net/photo/14270713</a></p>

I think it's fine if someone wants to take a very rigid approach to their making and viewing of

photographs - after all it's very individual.<P>

 

But for me, I have no use for checklists and strict dictionary definitions, either in making photographs or

viewing them. With respect to the making side, I try to rely on getting to know the person I'm

photographing even for just a minute (they are strangers I meet on the street) and then doing my best create a photo that captures an aspect about them that I'm feeling at the moment.

With respect to viewing photographs, it's generally about reaction and emotional pull, and then contemplating the subject's personality, although with incomplete information <P>

 

Steve's beautiful photograph up above speaks to me being pulled in on initial reaction starting with her striking blue eyes (complimented by blue hairband and shirt), and then thinking about

what his subject might be like in person. I love photographing people and looking at the

photographs others have made.<P>

 

<center>

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<img src= "http://www.citysnaps.net/2014%20Photos/R.jpg"><BR>

<i>

San Francisco • ©Brad Evans 2014

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<p>Brad - "I love photographing people and looking at the photographs others have made."</p>

<p>Cool.</p>

 

<p>Intimate is different from good. Intimate is different from effective. Intimate is different from astonishing. Intimate is different from excellent. Intimate is different from profound. Intimate is different from pensive. Intimate is different from beautiful, from striking, and from colorful. Intimate is different from conveying something of significance.</p>

<p>Intimacy, IMO, is rarer and harder to achieve than all those other qualities.</p>

>>> Intimate is different from good. Intimate is different from effective. Intimate is different from

astonishing. Intimate is different from excellent. Intimate is different from profound. Intimate is different from

pensive. Intimate is different from beautiful, from striking, and from colorful. Intimate is different from

conveying something of significance.

 

Really. So you're "definition" of intimate is formed by what it isn't? That seems odd to me.

<p>Most things are different from the things they aren't. Maybe everything is.</p>

<p>The Webster’s online definition #1 of intimate is this: “to make known especially publicly or formally.” When we photograph someone this is what we are potentially doing. Fred, to me “intimate” in a photo of a person, especially done in a street or documentary fashion, means to catch a perhaps fleeting glimpse of the person “underneath” the public persona, or the posed expression. I think our brains are especially sensitive to expression, and when we see various expressions, especially ones that are not so obvious, we become pulled in, in a sense, like Brad stated, trying to get a sense of what the person is like or thinking, etc. Also, as Laurie T pointed out . . .<em>we project our own stories on to the anonymous. We, and I guess it can also be unconscious, imagine the character of the person, the reason for the photograph, the history of why they are photographed in that particular environment.”</em> So, I agree with you, that intimacy isn’t synonymous with good, or serious, or beautiful, or striking or colorful, etc. </p>

<p>Charles, to me its not about features or clues that add up to a certain threshold of meaning. Its about expression, which is a combination of many things that form a gestalt, a totality, and its very subtle, and yet, we are very pulled in by the subtle.</p>

<p>Good points, Brad and Jeff. What I was trying to convey is that many of these adjectives were used in this thread in talking about posted photos. And I agree that some of the posted photos have these qualities. Some of them are very good. Some of them are effective. Some of them are striking. Some are beautiful. And those can make for significant photos, for sure. But I was thinking the thread was about intimacy and a lot of the photos posted don't feel and weren't even described as intimate or conveying intimacy.</p>

<p>I already talked about what I think intimacy IS, in previous posts. To repeat, for me, it has to do with privacy and with something personal I get connected to. An emotional closeness, but not as much a universal closeness as a particular or individualized closeness.</p>

<p>And even though I think you have a point, Brad, I do find that defining things, at least in part, by what they're not can actually be quite clarifying. It can be a little like the use of negative space. Others may not find negation and opposition as useful and expressive as I sometimes do, which is understandable.</p>

To me, intimate is (or can be, among other things) about what Charles said at the top of this thread: "Intimate

means, closely acquainted, familiar, close."

 

As a viewer I sense that in the connection Steve had with his subject. And as a result of certain aspects of

the photograph I feel a connection with myself, even though I don't know who she is.

<p>Steve, just saw your post. Thanks for adding what you did.</p>

<p>It's that sense of connection that, to me, is key, personal connectedness, individualized and specific connectedness. For me, it has little to do with a glimpse of the person underneath the pose or public persona. I think actors, for example, create senses of intimacy even while not revealing anything in particular about themselves. My own photographic subjects can be like such actors and/or I can see them and experience them that way. One creates and/or captures a moment of personal connection, and that can be in the pose itself, in the theater itself, in the persona itself.</p>

<p>In a two-hour photo session, I may not hope to seriously find out anything terribly significant down deep inside the person. So if I can, together with them in a momentary dialogue, create scenes and characters that somehow are organic, meaning they come together emotionally with the visuals and the style I choose, then I can very much fabricate what I'd consider to be an intimate photo. As a matter of fact, I often find that my own thinking that I could really get below the surface of someone in a couple of hours or a moment of shooting would actually make me less likely to find a level of intimacy. Obviously, though, we all work differently.</p>

<p>Yes, Fred, <em>connection.</em> I think we are possibly describing the same crystal from different facets. In other threads I have often referred to this connection as "energy." Hard to describe otherwise. We respond to photos that have this energy between the photographer and the person being photographed. My example above has it; so does Brad's. Is it related to intimacy? Fred, on style, I agree we certainly all have our own way of approaching the subject. Mine is more of a "fly on the wall" approach and I try not to engage myself with my subjects, but just let them be and watch for moments when I can "borrow" them for a few seconds. </p>

<p>Here is another of Steve's pictures of the young woman, Whitney <a href="/photo/11254710">http://www.photo.net/photo/11254710</a></p>

<p>Now I feel from having two pictures that from the first one I didn't know Whitney at all.</p>

<p>So yes there is a hint of the person in the photo by Steve. It intimates, delicately suggests. Hint, intimate, announce. That is a lovely type of photography. Part of its appeal is its delicacy.</p>

<p>It's just that to me there isn't enough of a suggestion of who the person in private is, not enough information in the photo to reassure me that I am not just projecting. Did I make an accurate connection or did I not?</p>

<p>In real life, in my coyote picture example, is my story about the inner world of the coyote just my own story, or did I really see into the coyote? Was I just projecting? Even when face to face, we often don't know. It's hard to separate our own projections from the reality of the other person.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Charles, I think all we can do is guess, and project, as you have just noted. Which expressions do it for us can certainly vary from person to person. You "connect" better with the second one you refer to. Great!</p>

<p>Charles, for me accuracy doesn't have that much to do with it. It's more about whether I personally relate to what I'm seeing or how personally a subject and photographer seem to relate (not only in the moment of the shooting but, more importantly, as seen in the photo, in their roles as subject and photographer). What I want from Lee J. Cobb when he plays (when he <em>is</em>) Willy Loman is not to know that what I'm seeing portrayed has any accurate counterpart in the real life of Lee J. Cobb. What I want is for him to get me <em>inside</em> the portrayal. I think a photo can be that same kind of portrayal, where there's a connection among gesture, expression, and portrayed person.</p>

<p>That, I think, is more than an encounter and, Steve, for me, more than energy. It's a particular kind of energy. An actor may have great expressions but it's when the expressions relate to his character, when there is a nuanced and delicately suggestive relationship between the expression and at least something about the <em>character </em>(which may but does not have to represent the person playing the character or filling the role of the character) that I will tend to feel that intimate photographic connection.</p>

<p>I think wonderful expressions can make for a great portrait. In order for it to feel <em>intimate</em> to me, though, the wonderful expression won't just pull me in or stimulate me to think about what the person may be feeling or thinking. The expression will tie me to the bigger picture of the overall portrayal and who the photographed (not necessarily the actual) person seems to be. I think the guy in Brad's first photo has a great expression, a little flirtatious and very charming in my eyes, very energetic. But I don't see the expression as being connected to him as a character or as a more fully-revealed person. It's an expression that, for me, stands alone. If the story unfolding put that expression together with more of a sense of his photographic character or his actual personhood, I might then feel that connectedness from expression to being, which for me makes for intimacy. As it is, the expression relates to the woman's expression and I think successfully so, but there's no wholeness to either person that the expressions themselves are connected to. When I feel where the expression is coming from or I am somehow showed that, I tend to experience a more intimate photo.</p>

<p>Charles, I can appreciate that you, if I'm reading you right, think of an intimate photo as one which is in some way authentically biographical or at least includes that aspect. That can be a very important photographic connection and can certainly create a sense of intimacy. But when we don't know the person and even when we do, it can also be solely in the emotional world of the photo that I'd want that connection to see where the gestures and expressions come from and what they're about. I think there are great portraits built around gestures and expressions more or less for their own sake and not really tied in a personal or subjective or intimate way to the bigger picture of their photographic source, the person as known in the photo. I generally would not call those intimate.</p>

>>> But I don't see the expression as being connected to him as a character or as a more fully-revealed

person.

 

But I do. Perhaps it's from shooting on the street and having encountered and met many different

people from all walks of life over the years. A different background and perspective, I suspect, than the more structured manner in which you shoot portraits.

<p>Beaches series of Rineke Dijkstra:</p>

<p><a href="http://broadstrokes.org/2010/08/16/from-the-vault-rineke-dijkstra/">http://broadstrokes.org/2010/08/16/from-the-vault-rineke-dijkstra/</a></p>

<blockquote>

<p>Giving minimal direction to her sitters, Dijkstra relinquishes her role as director of the scene—producing a photographic situation in which the subjects must reveal themselves or a version of themselves to the camera lens.</p>

</blockquote>

<p> </p>

<p>Charles, interesting description of Dijkstra's working style. Like I said, we all work differently. I will sometimes direct quite a bit, unlike Dijkstra at least as stated in your description for her beach series.</p>

<p>My one <a href="/photo/16071752">HOMAGE TO DIJKSTRA</a> was inspired by location and style and how the subject fit into all that. But I evidently approached it differently in terms of how I worked and how Andy and I relate when we're shooting together. I directed Andy pretty specifically up to a point. Then Andy's natural inclinations took over and also, of course, how Andy related to the entire scene and her perception of the portrayal, which was limited since Andy really couldn't foresee what the portrayal would be and Dijkstra was never mentioned at the time of shooting, though it was my intention at the time to make a Fred and Andy version of a Dijkstra beach photo.</p>

<p>Now, in this case, I think we do get a glimpse of Andy-ness, the clothing and wig tells some of the story, the high heels on the beach in both our minds provided a bit of absurdity or at least awkwardness, both lightly humorous and a little more penetrating in terms of certain felt tensions. The added artificial lighting played with the artifice of clothing and costume while the atmospheric reality of the beach suggested that the artifice meant something real as well. The way Andy held herself and what we read in her face and posture are Andy being Andy being photographed on a public beach and all that went with that for Andy on that day. While I told Andy where to stand, I chose this shot from among many with different expressions, this one telling the tale I thought worked best as a photo. I also liked it when Andy held the red purse in front rather than to the side and I liked this one for the way the shoe looked in the sand at the moment. I continued directing even after the shot, in choosing what I'd post process and how and to show this one out of all we took that day to viewers. It's always an unclear line where acting and directing separate and where acting is a bringing forth of lived experience of the actor and where it's fabrication of character. I'm not too concerned with determining the exact point of distinction and am more into the fluidity and excitement of the process with all its ebbs and flows and overlaps of fiction and reality. When Andy is acting more and when Andy is more herself and the strength of the overlap of those two things is an open question, which both Andy and I grapple with.</p>

<p>In other instances in my portfolio, <a href="/photo/6381585&size=lg">KEN AND MARK</a> for example, I get much less a glimpse of who the people themselves are but that doesn't detract for me and it doesn't prevent viewers from projecting all sorts of personal emotional takes on the situation and the feeling they are let in on something personal, which I think they are even though it's not exactly candid. The portrait of Andy seems intimate to me because of the connection of pose, gesture, expression, clothing, and person behind it all. The picture of Ken and Mark, which has little to do with Ken's and Mark's actual relationship, works partly because I feel not only the presence of the photographer in the situation with them but an awareness at least on Ken's part of the photographer, and all the attendant questions, connections, and discomforts that three-way relationship provides. This seems born out both in my own feelings about the two photos and in the various reactions described in comments by viewers.</p>

<p>I will not expect and would never expect all viewers to respond similarly. All I can give is my own response and what strikes <em>me</em> as intimate in addition to saying that intimacy is something I continually work on but don't often achieve to the degree I aspire to. It's one of the main things that keeps me photographing, a search, a longing, an evolution toward something.</p>

<p>I find an intimacy in the anonymity of photographing strangers that would be difficult, perhaps even painful, to display in people I know and love. I have many photographs of family in the midst of arguments, in pain, and in death. I've shown very few of them to anyone, and deleted most from my photo.net portfolio after receiving a few critiques that were considerate and insightful enough to give me an idea that I was on the right track. But I'm still no closer to being comfortable with showing those photos publicly.</p>

<p>I try to avoid photographing strangers in ways that they might find embarrassing if they were to find the photos online. But I do try to find little details and spontaneous expressions and gestures that seem, at least on the surface, to present a certain intimacy. It's not the intimacy of <em>knowing</em> them or anything about them. It's the <em>imagining</em> that I know something about them in this moment. I don't wish to know anything else for certain. Why spoil a perfectly good fantasy with something so mundane as <em>knowing</em> brings.</p>

<p>It is, at times, so disturbing a notion, so preposterous a presumption -- to imagine we have some special relationship with these strangers, that they would approve, or at least acquiesce to our passion for capturing moments, merely because we are artists and have good intentions -- so unsettling, that I occasionally must take a few weeks or months away and do something else, to regain some perspective.</p>

<hr />

<blockquote>

<p>"We know he thinks the act is making him into something different. His 'becoming' ...but I don't know what it is he thinks he's becoming.<br /> The answer is something to do with how he uses the mirrors. That's what's missing for me. why the mirrors?"</p>

<p>"You will be better than anything... anything I have ever known. As I see me in your eyes... as I see me accepted there. Reflected there in mirrors.<br /> And you, you are the fuel for my changing... as this event becomes one more step towards what I am becoming that is different than what I have ever been before...<br /> As I see me, accepted by you, in the silver<br />mirrors<br />of your eyes..."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>--Will Graham, speculating about the serial killer's motivations in the movie Manhunter, adapted from the Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon.<br /> The serial killer, Francis Dolarhyde, works in a film processing lab and chooses his victims from the home movies he sees in the lab.</p>

<hr />

<p>I've seen this couple en route to the Bass Performance Hall a few times. I think both are members of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. Initially I was drawn to the image of her black-clad figure mirrored in the feminine figure of the cello (or is it a bass? I'm not sure).<br /><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17623888-md.jpg" alt="Trio" width="680" height="680" border="0" /></p>

<p>Only when I drew nearer at a traffic light did I notice her hand grasping the instrument, like a child between the couple, being safely led across the street.<br /><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17623887-md.jpg" alt="The one in the middle" width="680" height="680" border="0" /></p>

<hr />

<p>For more than three years this next photo sat unnoticed in my computer archives. I remember taking it and, after quickly reviewing it in thumbnail size, thinking it was nothing special. Just a brief moment between a young man and woman, one of hundreds I took that day.</p>

<p>Then, earlier this year, I looked at it again in a larger size, and noticed the faces of the fellows in the background toward the right. What were they seeing? For all I know they're gazing longingly at a beer and corn dog stand just out of frame. That look of hunger... but I don't want to know anything more.<br /> <img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17638382-md.jpg" alt="I can wait a million days" width="680" height="450" border="0" /><br /> *<br /> But in my head I suddenly heard the lyrics to the Mazzy Star song <em>Roseblood</em>, with vague, unsettling allusions to desire and ominous reactions to feelings of rejection:<br /><em>"Capture a smile and then that's all<br /> You won't know her so it's ok ... <br />Secrets in her lipstick mouth... <br />I can wait a million days, 'til her smile... goes away."</em></p>

<p>Photography is at times a terrifying responsibility.<br /> *<br /> <img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/16800872-md.jpg" alt="No sense" width="680" height="510" border="0" /></p>

<p>Lex, taking your initial two-photo series (where we see the detail more clearly in the second) . . . Your text, the way your words tell the story, and the second photo slowly <em>revealing</em> what the first one doesn't quite show (keeps more <em>private</em>) because the detail is lost or not obvious, establishes just the kind of intimacy I'm talking about. The gesture combines with the bigger picture in a moving and connected way (and the connection is both literal and metaphorical, obviously, since her hand is clutching the bass he's carrying). By presenting it as a series you kind of delay the gratification, which punctuates the literal connection we're not at first aware of and helps establish that intimacy. The gesture itself, of her hand holding the same instrument he carries, is one thing, but its taking place within a bigger picture and within your narratively-established time frame helps attach it to something bigger and makes the connectedness of gesture to whole palpable and felt. More and more, I'm noticing the brief to more lengthy narratives that accompany your posted photos in various threads and I sense your willingness to open up, which often seems mirrored in the photos (though mirrored in a less literal way in a lot of cases). It's not just telling the viewer to use his imagination and go where he wants to go, though I imagine you are fine with that as well. It seems like you're wanting to connect in some way to the viewer through your words and that you are sharing in that journey. That's an intimate approach.</p>

<p>You've emphasized the imagination of what's going on in the photo over the knowing. And I made sure to talk about what the photo may offer itself, not necessarily having to be tied to biography, in my response to Charles. For me, though, it depends on the photo, and some connection to knowledge or to the real people remains also powerful in a lot of cases. I see most photos as some combination of representing or at least alluding to their referents AND being severed from them to some extent as well. The pendulum, for me, swings wildly in terms of where a photo may take me and how much connection I may feel to the actual person or scene that was before the camera.</p>

<p>In a recent weekly thread, we talked about the famous Iwo Jima photo and I wouldn't know how to separate that from knowledge of what it was all about and what the real situation was. That may be easy because it's documentary, but I think so many photos, even ones that are much more art, have that important element of documenting as well, even if that aspect is shaded and sometimes even disguised. The reality still touches me even when my imagination is soaring. In fact, that tie to reality actually may send my imagination even further.</p>

<p>Steve wrote: "Yes, Fred, <em>connection.</em>"<em><br /></em></p>

<p>For me, "intimate" is specifically not about connection; in fact, it's the opposite. A connection acknowledges, accentuates the location of, and then tries to deal with, difference. By contrast, to be intimate, IMO, is to be (or feel to be) without difference; to be in a common field. Two violins playing in harmony are not connected; they are intimate. Water in the same current is not connected; it is intimate. Unbounded, undivided, in harmony, in the same field, the same current.</p>

<p>A frenzied mob is not connected; it is horribly intimate.</p>

<p>I feel very strongly connected to the subjects of Mary Ellen Marks's and W. Eugene Smith's photographs; I feel no intimacy at all to the subjects of their photographs. Which is as it should be. They are being made to or allowed to make claims on me from their strongly defined, separately built and illustrated identities. Difference is the point. Connection is what is used by the two photographers to carry meaning that is specifically, intentionally disharmonic with my own identity.</p>

<p>On the other hand, I feel strongly intimate with Roni Horn's work, and with your (Steve's) posted picture and with the other examples posted -- except for one which I'll get to in a moment. But I feel no connection to these strange (wonderful!) fragments of existence that harmonize with my own. How could I? How <em>could</em> I connect to what is not separated from me?</p>

<p>The one picture that is not as intimate, but which does connect (and both for the same reason) is Brad's very first posting (which is a great picture, by the way). Because the people are smiling, believe it or not. Horn mentions this (she excluded all smiling pictures from her series because, she said, the "broke continuity" and "cohesiveness)." Why does being smiled at make a picture less intimate for me? I think it's because a "smile at" is a way of dealing with difference; it immediately positions me (the "smiled at" person) as different -- and, as I already said, for me, intimate is a release from boundaries of difference.</p>