Jump to content
© © 2012, John Crosley/Crosley Trust, All rights reserved; no reproduction without express prior written permission from copyright holder

'The Cleaner' (B&W Ed.)


johncrosley

© 2012, John Crosley/Crosley Trust, all rights reserved, no reproduction without prior express written permission from copyright holder. Software: Adobe Photoshop CS5 Windows; full frame, unmanipulated.

Copyright

© © 2012, John Crosley/Crosley Trust, All rights reserved; no reproduction without express prior written permission from copyright holder

From the category:

Street

· 124,944 images
  • 124,944 images
  • 442,913 image comments


Recommended Comments

It's -20 Celsius or near zero Fahrenheit outside, there's snow and

ice on the pavement, the shoppers on this busy boulevard/Metro

stop have gone home and are drinking their hot tea, meals, maybe

watching TV and getting ready for bedtime activies, but

this 'CLEANER, is going about her duties faithfully, energetically,

using a rudimentary broom and an old cart to haul away the day's

debris. Your ratings, critiques and observations are invited and

most welcome. If you rate or critique harshly or very critically,

please submit a helpful and constructive comment; please share

your photographic knowledge to help improve my photography.

Thanks! Enjoy? john

Link to comment

This sign atop the store says 'ALLO' in Cyrillic, which means what it sounds like, 'Hello', and it's a mobile phone store.  

Ukraine has a huge number of mobile phone stores as it's wired phone system is rudimentary, old, and not well connected with the mobile phone system -- many, perhaps most people have no wired phones at all.

Moreover, most people buy 'units' from recharge cards with recharge information in a long code they purchase from shops and street vendors, which creates a lively business for recharge.

Although it's possible to have a mobile calling plan with billing, it's more of a rarity; mobile phones are mostly on a 'use it then recharge it when it's finished basis', with recharge cards being for sale ubiquitously.

john

John (Crosley)

Link to comment

"hello" may be just about universal.  Israel has also borrowed the word but it is pronounced "allo" as in you photo. Come to think about it the letter "h" when reciting the American-English alphabet does not stress the "h" and comes out sounding like ach with a long "a" instead of "hech" -I think. "bye" might also be universal. Israelis have borrowed that also but say "bye bye" instead of "bye". In spoken English I believe 'bye' is general and "bye bye" has an affectionale connotation.  Bye bye

Link to comment

This photo was one of a very long series, chosen in part because of the position of the clearner - it's far from a one-off shot, as it took 20 minutes of standing (and freezing cajones) to catch her in this position.

There is substantial 'mirroring' in this shot - repetition of form and shape.

Can you spot it?  Let us know if you do (us means me and the many others who will read this comment over time, as my comments are well read.)

It's one of the reasons this particular frame was chosen; I felt it was the best, in part because of the mirroring.

john

John (Crosley)

Link to comment

The issue is do you say 'h' as in American-English 'history' with the 'h' sounded, or more correctly 'aspirate'?

Or do you say it differently, as an Englishman with a glottal stop, 'istory, not pronouncing the 'h'.

There is general usage in broadcast American media now of (incorrectly) saying 'an 'istory' as in 'an 'istory shows that in general higher taxes of lower classes means less money being spent'

This is not the first time there has been widespread media mispronunciation; for a long while, the broadcast media were using the term hom-o-cide instead of homicide, and pronouncing it like 'homosexual' with a long 'o' not having looked up the spelling and its proper pronunciation'.  That now has stopped completely.

It's still written by broadcast media as 'an history' but pronounced 'an 'istory' when in fact it should be (with aspirate 'h') 'a history'.

My education is long and deep, and includes minutiae like this.

Interestingly, personally Ukrainians really do not generally say 'Allo' when answering the telephone, but may say one of several other things, such as 'health to you' in Russian or other greetings . . . . not many  of them sounding exceedingly polite, as Ukrainians, physically polite people who yield on sidewalks and in crowds or crowded Metros and do NOT fight or yell at each other generally (very orderly people unlike many of my experience in Russia) seem not very verbally expressive or polite in public.

My experience in Russia was that the Russians were far more aggresive, but still extremely taciturn verbally by US -- Western standards.

Heads down, eyes ahead in crowds is the word in both countries on the Metro, but that may be nearly universal.

However, get on an airplane to Poland from the US instead of Kyiv, with a bunch of Polish people and for hours they've all made new friends and are chatting away with fellow passengers, and they're just a nation just next door.

It's national psyche; the Poles being a much warmer people verbally and also more 'open'.

Being 'open' in Stalinist times was an invitation to the Gulag and death, so it's probably ingrained in Ukainians and Russians, like US black distrust of Southern State police officers. 

Industrial slavery existed as recently as 1942, based on enslavement of blacks stopped on 'trumped up offenses' then put to work on chain gangs or for industrial establishments for years without pay' - a sort of corrupt and knowing enslavement that was stopped by Roosevelt's executive order at the start of WWII as an anti-terror countermeasure.

Jim Crow laws continued until I was a young man and beyond, as well.  No wonder there was so much racial tension and hatred during much of my lifetime, but now much diffused.

Didn't know the part about industrial slavery?   It's not in most history books, but now is newly and well documented, a surprise to the few northerners and other Americans who have seen the exhaustive documentation, and not much of a surprise to many blacks, nationwide in the US.

bye bye.

john

John (Crosley)

Link to comment

rectangles galore obviously, but more noteworthy are the inverted V's (or half M's)... the V's are there, too (the upper profile of the cart, for example)

 

what struck me immediately here was its mood of bleak loneliness - which i ascribe to your chosen shooting angle and position

 

you have positioned the sole source of bright light in a key position - its wash flows out towards the viewer and profiles her as she bends down, intent on her task, unconcerned or oblivious of the lurking photographer

 

 

Link to comment

I hoped you'd find one point and you found four others to comment on

1. Source of light; that is essential, as it helped form silhouettes; I love to create silhouettes in a certain number of my photos.  It's great for change of pace and keeping a certain mystery.

2. The use of rectangles; this is something that I was not 'focusing' on at all, and it's a complete surprise to me, yet, you are right, rectangles abound, even on the cart.  It isn't the 'mirroring' I was 'seeing' and my mind was 'focusing on' but it's there just the same.  I saw other 'mirroring', and that makes this photo rich with double mirroring -- read below.

3.  The bleakness of the scene.  You are entirely correct, this is a scene of absolute bleakness; the woman had no idea I was there, standing openly seven steps down in the Metro exit/entrance, at lens just about above foot level, framing her as she went along about her duties, and as the occasional person passed by.

4.  The point of view, mentioned just above, is unusual, and is attainable for me clandestinely only from such places as coming out of underground passageways such as this Metro entrance/exit, so I always make special effort to reconnoiter before I make the final trudge out of such places, in case there is a special viewpoint photo I can make; those places usually are crowded with people and activity (this was just before that particular entrance/exit closed for the evening -- maybe even afterwards since I'd already exited and stayed there for some time, taking 40-60 shots as she methodically worked her way through the pavement and ice, cleaning, sometimes far out of sight, always returning.

(I tried to show her the captures, but it unsettled her that I approached her, so I figured my departure was the better part of valor.  Not everyone expects a stranger at night to come to them and show them what he thinks is a good photo of them -- other things do happen in night's stillness, and they aren't all good.  (I have no part in such things, of course, just me and my camera and good photos is my sole goal, and if I can share good ones, so much the better, but not to anyone's detriment.)

********

The 'mirroring' I was seeking to see if anyone 'saw' or noticed was that of the signage with its A and ^^ signs for ALLO (in Cyrillic) (I didn't bother to change to a Russian/Cyrillic keyboard).

Please look at the cart's handle pointing upward and rightward at an angle, then to the right to the rudimentary broom the woman is sweeping the sign with, pointed down and to the right - in essence, those two lines also form a ^ figure.

So, up and down there is the inverted 'v' figure; that's the mirroring I was seeking a viewer to point out.

But you've done just as well to point out the rectangles, and silly me, I not only overlooked them, but didn't at all realize that this photo is specially rich with double mirroring (rectangle signs on roof, rectangle windows, handle of cart is parallelogram (as we view it) and paving stones in near foreground also are rectangles.

Then the mirroring of the ^ symbol (Russian for 'L' in the sign as well as the 'A' which is so similar).

Wow, much richer than even I thought.

I have another capture in which all this is present, but the woman's outstretched broom is in the rear against the building, same direction for the same ^ figure with the cart handle (if one 'stretches' his/her mind a little), the same repetition of squares as well, and then to the right a pedestrian passing immediately to the right going darkly down from the top of the steps, blocking off part of the right  and creating a sense more of depth for this photo (although it does have plenty of depth already.  I chose this one; that one would have done well too, I think.

Good job.

Congratulations for an effective and careful exposition, and thanks.

john

John (Crosley)

Link to comment

Next time I'll read your comments even closer.

I do give you credit for spotting the 'Ls' (inverted 'Vs').

The only thing I do think you did not see that I did point out was to see the cart handle and its burden formed a 'V', while the cart handle and the women's broom for me formed an 'inverted V'.

Or did I misunderstand you?

I don't want to do that again.

Also, note the slight inverted 'v' in the silhouette between her two legs.

My apologies for misreading your comment; Saturday night/Sunday morning late is always a difficult time for reading carefully (no I don't drink or imbibe) -- just tired.

I'd edit my comment above to acknowledge your contribution portion that I previously missed, but the editing window is closed.

Thanks for your forbearance.  I'll try to read everything you write extra carefully and several times before I start writing next time; you made a very worthy effort.

john

John (Crosley)

Link to comment

It was just an oversight of which we are all guilty at times... Your second response made me smile... You are a very particular man. Your verbosity results from that singular trait. And so I keep coming back to your photographs...

I had not considered it necessary to list out all the occurrences of V's (upright or inverted) but if one is so inclined there are plenty of them above...

One particular visually attractive feature that I missed pointing out earlier, even as I noticed it, is the oblique parallel thrusts of the railing at left and the handle of the cart - as they are metal, they are precisely straight, not so the woman's back... we humans bend, and this perhaps is our resiliency...

Link to comment

Damn, I never would have thought of the metal handrail to be parallel to the cart handrail supports, also metal, but there they are.

That's why I sometimes enjoy the process of 'critique' so much, especially when I get such able responses as yours.

Keep up the good work.

There can sometimes be a wealth of photographic/compositional devices to spot in a select few of my photos -- devices I more than sometimes am unaware of until able critics point them out or such photos have been thoroughly gone over by critics and me.

Best to you.

john

John (Crosley)

Link to comment

It may not have started out this way, but I'm beginning to see myself as a documentarians of present-day life of life in Ukraine, especially ordinary Ukrainians -- not at all a journalist, just a photographer whose daily catch is maybe starting to add up to something significant, amidst all the fluff and suds I produce.

Am I crazy? 

I didn't ever envision this would be the way I'd spend this part of my life.

But I happen to enjoy almost every minute of it.

You're the artist; I'm the documentarian, I think.   

Small minutia of life by small minutiae, and it all seems to be adding up into something larger.

I wonder if this is it or there's more -- a greater destination than Photo.net for my work?

I wonder . . . .

john

John (Crosley)

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...