Public People

[charleswood]

<p>Ilia - "Some even say it has been pushed up and moulded into a kind of continuously revolving guilt [syndrome] which in turn became a driving force of social progress in western civilization."</p>

<p>Which is why our relationship to other than human animals is instructive, particularly because we have healthy roots present somewhere from which our own adaptations innervate. This coyote communicates all it needs to by his presence alone and most of our species' communication is nonverbal.</p>

<p>It's over 100 F, the coyote down flat with a tiny about of energy diverted to his ears. His left ear points west at me, his eyes look east, the direction from which his prodigal son will soon come to their daily meeting place. He has protectively positioned himself between me and his soon to arrive son. From his vantage point he can track my movements and also look and listen for his son's arrival. He also can listen for encroachments on his north and south. His battle plan, if he needs it, is in muscle memory, a living topographical map of his home range. He's ready to go to work, but he is as flat as a pancake except for his ears, anticipating and very relaxed, saving his energy for when it is actually needed, communicating with his presence everything he needs to about what he values and about what he protects, a precious treasure, this guardian of life itself.</p><div></div>

[iliafarniev]

<p>(-: Isn't it thuja bush in bg?</p>

[charleswood]

<p>I don't know what thuja bush is, so I can't answer that question. However, a little more information, it is landscaping, put there and irrigated by people (it's in a water reclamation facility). The coyote has nevertheless found a way to use it for his purposes.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>We need to be strangers to each other mostly, in those public spaces.</em></p>

<p>I think we are often strangers to each other but I often don't find I <em>need</em> to be. The more I photograph in public, I now often find it to my advantage both humanistically and photographically to be less of a stranger to people. I can keep my distance, hide behind shields I either find or invent, be suspicious or consider that I might seem suspicious, or I can be more open. There are ways to interact and reach out of my space and into another's without letting my guard down. Living in a big city, it doesn't pay to be reckless but it also doesn't work to try to remain a stranger, at least for me. The more I reach out, the more people seem to reach back, with exceptions of course.</p>

<p>The other day, I was climbing a long flight of stairs coming out of the metro. I do that, instead of taking the escalator, to get more exercise when I'm out and about. As I reached the top of the very long three-tiered staircase, a young woman in her twenties passed me, turned and smiled, and said "Sir, I beat you!" I laughed and told her she should have given me at least a couple of stairs head start for every for every year I had on her. As I said that, without thinking, I made the simple, kind gesture of tapping her shoulder. She didn't mind. It was a sweet encounter, one which I would have been sorry to miss if either of us had been guarded to the point where it made us non-human. While we can learn much from our animal brothers and sisters, I do well to remember how much I am also different from them. That might be easier for me, living farther from most wild animals and in much more intimate proximity to lots of strangers who may remain strangers locked up in cages of their own making or who may attempt a little walk through the cage bars every now and then. Touch usually goes along well with a particular kind of attitude. It's not something that can be universally dealt with outside a given context and demeanor and way of engaging.</p>

<p>Sometimes, when I'm photographing I want that colder sort of distance and won't reach out to those I'm shooting. More often I want to explore a kind of connection and will do all I can to connect, to remain as unguarded as is safe, and to make intimacy at some level an important goal to achieve and express.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Thanks Fred. I like those kind of interactions with people, spontaneous as you describe, and what's interesting also to me is that the coyote, a social, spontaneous, territorial, routine rooted animal has found in our urban/suburban environments all that it needs to have a good life that is in sync with its wild instincts.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>This is Larry Sultan in his book <em>Pictures from Home</em>:</p>

<p>.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Last year, at our annual family reunion at Lake Tahoe, I sneaked into their bedroom while my mother was taking her afternoon nap. I stood by the door for several minutes to be sure that she was asleep and then carefully tiptoed over to the bed. She was lying on her stomach with her head turned toward me. I was so apprehensive of waking her that I breathed in rhythm with her. Standing at the foot of the bed, I realized that I had never seen the underside of her foot. I had my camera, so I photographed it. I could see the slight grass stains from walking barefoot that morning to the lake.</p>

<p>I wanted to photograph it again and again, to use up an entire roll of film. Then it struck me that she was not really asleep, that her breathing, like mine, was controlled. We were co-conspirators. Just as I was secretly photographing, she was secretly awake.</p>

<p>She felt me looking.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>.</p>

<p>[<em>NOTE: This post and this thread are not meant to be in any way critical of public vs private photography. I find the differences and peculiarities of different environments, and creatures within those different environments, to be fascinating on their own merits</em>.]</p>

 

[iliafarniev]

<p>good point Fred (-:</p>

[shutterbud]

<p>Big city life is a new mode of interaction for humans. In Tokyo, New York [to a lesser extent] or Shanghai, I have a great sense of freedom. I love the fact that no-one knows or cares who I am, that I can be anything within limits, depending on the way I dress, the accessories I have, what I am doing/reading/buying. Put me in a backpack and torn jeans wth a pair of Converse and I am on a three month trip around the world and probably slightly lost. Put me in a good jacket, real trousers, shoes and a nice leather briefcase and I am anything from a teacher to a manager in an import/export business. The character of megacity transport means that we have nothing to do, nothing at all engaging to look at and no-one wants to talk to us for an hour or more. Would anyone just stand in their hallway for an hour? This is why, whenever you go on the subway in a megacity today, 90% of people are glued to their "smart"phones, which makes them look like zombies. I don't have one. I look around. When I am shooting, I feel like I inhabit my environment far more actively, yet have picked up a sense of tact and empathy I didn't have or need before I got into SP. I am both more involved and more foreign now- seeking out and engaging dissonance, or sneaking up on people and places, crouching down and looking intently. I think the photographs linked to are more Japanese than you are giving them credit. The Japanese dwell on their disconnectedness often since they are all under social pressure unthinkable in the Secular West. I feel free in a big city. Very few Japanese have that feeling in their lives.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>By S. Carmiggelt:</p>

<p>.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>[illinois] Jacquet, a small, resolute man in a brown striped suit, has the subdued, calm appearance of a cruel landlord who exploits his tenants and acts tough when it comes to a new kitchen doorknob, but who also has the facility to weep like a Slav down at the bar on the corner. And indeed, once he began to play, he was prepared to go to the edge of a stroke for us. He plays a tenor saxophone and wrestles with this big horn as if it's a lynx that keeps trying to bite him in the throat.</p>

<p>His brother, one shade lighter, stands off to the side like a haughty steward and is very angry at a small, shiny trumpet, through which he occasionally snarls all his pent-up rage into the world. the immovable pianist rides his instrument like a tractor, but the tall slender trombone player, with his eyes half-closed, flutters to and fro like a pennant in the breeze of the music, a delightful, liberated swaying to which one ought to be able to devote one's life. Mr. Shibah -- one of the boys -- steps up with serious spectacles, like a UNO delegate from an aggrieved desert, and conscientiously burps a full house into the microphone. The bass player, a grave, enraptured man, uses his unwieldy box as sparring partner, while the drummer -- with his giant teeth bared all the while -- manages his drums with the drowsy delight of a fat, unintelligent woman preparing a nice, greasy meal on the stove. While the musical tension steadily builds, a kind of malicious enjoyment takes hold of this group of black men, a sinful rapture, like during a cockfight.</p>

<p>On the stage packed with audience members, the photographers, flashguns popping without regard, creep about like decorators laying the carpet during a wedding. But no one minds. People enjoy, exult, applaud, shout, groan, whistle. Under the lugubrious billiard-table lights, in which the smoke of the prohibited cigarettes dreams capricious trails, the atmosphere is somewhere between a boxing match and a political meeting. But there's also consecration. The sacred white ox is slaughtered. A large fire is lit. An enormous outburst of rage is being forced through a very thin straw. You can see them sweat, they're very much alive -- and they almost die. When at the end Illinois has survived the battle with his saxophone after all and, after a terrible cry, falls off the stage, an unimaginable ovation tears itself loose from the crowd. Hitler has demanded the Saar Basin. The torero has brought the bull to its knees. The world champion is down. We've taken a Turkish bath, everyone is happy, and no one knows why.</p>

<p>What's that you say? Instinct? Yes, that definitely has something to do with it. But so what? We happen to have them, don't we?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>.</p>

<p> </p>

[one_ant]

 

<blockquote>

<p>What's your take on yourself when in public as compared to when in private, and on the people that you see and photograph in public?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I am horribly self aware in the street, I’ve been delivered in a box that says FRAGILE and THIS SIDE UP but the courier has deposited the carton on the pavement with me inside and upside down. The complications are huge and insurmountable and yet this is how I arrive. It used to take ages but I am getting better at it and become less aware and in its place more aware. Michael’s beautiful subway photographs are a theme and mine a moment and while his might have started from an accident so did mine but the other kind. </p>

<p> </p>

<center><img src="http://www.oneant.com.au/content/misc/_ANT4516.jpg" alt="" />

<p> <strong>as if strUck by an iDEa</strong> (sooc)</p>

</center>

<p>Its about grief and its mine but I have disguised it as something else and as it happens it did become something else…</p>

<p><em>I/250^thof a millisecond and ignited like the spark from the strike of a match somewhere in the dark. Somewhere deep in the neural network in the tightly packed tangle is the instantaneous response to the moment, an ignited neuron sparking an action as fast as any star in the sky and across wiring enough to connect your head to the moon. A presynaptic neuron releases a code, a timed sequence of pulses called a spike train and ahead of it the Mylar track has been cleared as if a signal has been switched to divert all other thoughts. </em><br /><em> Your eyes turn slightly upward and away from the task at hand, you are focused on nothing in space and you stand in an odd silence as though your feet are planted in the eye of a hurricane. A silent alarm grows steadily louder and louder as more neurons are ignited, broadcasting the memories and experiences of a hundred lifetimes that were never yours. Your skin is dry but you feel it from the inside, your eyes are wide but your vision is inward, your heart is racing but your body is still. The speeding train of thought flashes by and suddenly you are released back into space and time by a force that moves your life forward …as if struck by an idea.</em></p>

<p>masks are very useful and problematic ...don't you think.</p>

<p>Ant<br />ɹǝpun uʍop puɐl ǝɥʇ ɯoɹɟ</p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>If scissors are not used daily on the beard it will not be long before the beard is, by its luxuriant growth, pretending to be the head.</p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>"What's your take on yourself when in public as compared to when in private, and on the people that you see and photograph in public?"</p>

<p>Private is the candid photograph. A reality.</p>

<p> </p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p> </p><div></div>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>Often Philosophy can be lost in fantasy losing touch with reality. </p>

<p><em>"The speeding train of thought flashes by and suddenly you are released back into space and time by a force that moves your life forward …as if struck by an idea."</em><br>

<em> </em><br>

<em>The moment is concerned with a lack of space in a an undulating reality lost in a uncrowned truth. </em><br>

<em> </em><br>

<em>The truth is not concerned but seeks an unconditional response to the banal of a lost secant of time.</em><br>

<em>Easily understandable to a mind of a purity which is is proud to open itself to indulge itself in a moment of sublime seventy.<br /></em></p>

<p><em>Three things in life are destructive :<br /></em></p>

<p><em>Anger, greed, and self esteem.<br /></em></p>

<p><em>Just a few thoughts.<br /></em><br>

<em> <br /></em></p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>I like to play with the children. A lot.</p>

<p>But then , sometimes, I like to talk to the Gods.</p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>Humanity in a photograph.</p>

<p>No words needed public or otherwise...</p><div></div>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>"All the world's a stage,<br /> And all the men and women merely players;<br /> They have their exits and their entrances,<br /> And one man in his time plays many parts,"</p>

<p>Cliché, </p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>Humanity.</p><div></div>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>There. I have drawn the curtain, and my show has ended.</p>

<p>I hope you all have enjoyed.</p>

 

[clive_murray_white]

<p>Having recently stumbled on this forum I thought I'd delve a little further, I'm one of those people who could hardly bring themselves to use public transport of any kind because it always seems to involve invading people's personal spaces - on the few occasions that I've thought that I may take a camera out with me just to see if humanity provides me with some interesting photographs, I soon realise that I'm feeling so awkward that really it isn't something I should be doing.</p>

<p>But there is a very funny twist to it, quite often if one of my sculptures is in a public place I'll want to get useful pictures of it doing it's thing with the public and on those occasions I have absolutely no feelings of self-consciousness at all - in fact I get quite lost in my work, it is exactly the same with photographing my own community, I don't know everybody but it never crosses my mind to feel uncomfortable.</p>

<p><img src="http://halfa.smugmug.com/Recent-sculpture/Clive-Murray-White-Sculpture/i-mJ8tpwF/0/L/L1011321%20copy-L.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="538" /></p>

[Julie H]

<p>I think people have a narrative for their private (back stage) life, and they have a narrative for their public, professional, career life (on stage) within which they are comfortable *because* of those narratives. But in todays world, there are areas within which we have no narrative other than that of "crossing" to the other side or to get back into one of those familiar, necessary narratives. [To the dichotomy police: obviously there can be more narratives than the two I've outlined for discussion purposes.]</p>

<p>“… A grocer who dreams is offensive to the buyer, because such a grocer is not wholly a grocer. [ ... ] There are indeed many precautions to imprison a man in what he is, as if we lived in perpetual fear that he might escape from it, that he might break away and suddenly elude his condition.” — <em>Sartre</em><br>

</p>

[Julie H]

<p>[Clive, at the time I made my previous comment, your picture was not showing up for me. I got it to show by taking the link directly from the little <em>this-is- not-showing-up</em> icon and pasting to my browser. That picture is a useful and interesting visual addition to this discussion -- and a nice photo on its own merits, looking at both the arrangement/dynamics of the figures along with the created sculpture (and, in our case, an awareness that her creator is behind the lens). As a bonus, there is also a nice color play. Thanks.]</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>I am guilty of continuous self awareness, awkwardly flaunting my self-consciousness while photographing strangers in public, laughing at myself and my audacity, and, perhaps worst of all, deliberate irony. Because, like Jack Crabb from <em>Little Big Man</em>, sometimes I find "the world was too ridiculous to even bother to live in."<br /> <br /> I saw these women photographing a little boy in a striped red shirt next to a horse with bright red plumage, and all at once I saw a bright red purse on the arm of one woman, and bright pink toenail polish on the other, and I laughed out loud with what I hoped would be the childish delight I felt in that moment, but which probably came out sounding like a maniacal stalker who was off his medications because I'm a longhaired wooly faced thief of moments and every moment I expect to get caught.<br /> <br /> I love <a href="/photo/15768401&size=lg">this photograph</a> because it's everything that's wrong and right with this sort of street photography. Every time I look at it I feel a disconcerting mixture of surprise, revulsion, pride, and delight, and I think "What the hell is wrong with me? Why do I think this is funny, or good, or an okay thing to do?"<br /> <br /> <img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/15768401-lg.jpg" alt="Ricoh GR Digital IV White Edition - street photography in "snap mode" with "Positive Film" Image..." width="1500" height="1125" border="0" /></p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>The world around us why should we not photograph and observe.</p>

<p>Is there a wickedness in this or just the joy of observing our fellow travelling's on their journey of life.</p>

[clive_murray_white]

<p>Thanks the kind words about the pic Julie - your "different hats" explanation works perfectly for me.</p>

<p>Years ago I attended a massive event called Working Papers on Photography (WOPOP), a contemporary photography talk fest, I was there by accident because a friend had brought his entire final year photography class down from Sydney to Melbourne for the conference and they were all camping at my house - much of the debate was about whether photographers should assume the right to steal people's characters - as in street photography.</p>

<p>By the 2nd day the students were very depressed because they were feeling that there was nothing much left that they could take pictures of.... admittedly many had swallowed very large Robert Frank pills. I think I formed the view that photography (like any art form) can have its own PC police.</p>

<p>Lex - artworks that are composed in two distinct parts often attract my attention, 2 always seems to cause conflict and comparison, with the result that the viewer is forced to dart back and forth, the result being that we stay with the picture far longer than if it was "nicely" composed - so I'm all for it. Fortunately for me I'm compelled to use lenses beyond 50mm, 90 in the pic above, because anything even a little bit wide will distort the sculpture far too much - so I never really get very close to the people while I'm photographing.</p>