'Stary Baba' [Old Grandmother]

I found this 'Stary Baba' selling produce in a semi-impromptu street

bazaar where women from far and wide show up to sell their (mostly

fresh) produce to passers-by, right next to a very organized and

institutionalized bazaar (with a modern supermarket in the basement of

the building behind and down the block). 'Stary' means 'very or

extremely old' and 'baba' is short for grandmother, but is used

commonly to refer to any older woman of grandmotherly age in Russian

(this is a mostly Russian speaking portion of Ukraine). Your ratings,

critiques and observations are invited and most welcome. If you rate

harshly, very critically, or wish to make a remark, please submit a

helpful and constructive comment; please share your photographic

knowledge to help improve my photography. Thanks! Enjoy! john

Very nice photo.

Thank you very much.

She was camera shy, but eventually I prevailed.

Barely.

I appreciate your taking the effort to comment.

john

John (Crosley)

Very revealing photo.There is strength and much beauty here.

"Oh my!!Me in a photo".Maybe what you have captured in this grandmother is some degree of amazement which she is trying to dissimulate behind that rugged but surely soft hand.Nice take on this gentle face mapped with hardship.Bravo for another excellent image!

Salutations-Laurent

wonderfull portrait

I believe you are very prescient. I kept telling her how beautiful she was.

I believed it then and still do; nothing insincere about that.

She was a total stranger except for maybe 2-3 minutes total in two different parts of one hour; just two small parts of maybe 45 seconds to one minute and a half each.

That's how such photos somehow come about.

Thanks for commenting.

john

John (Crosley)

This is such a wonderful image. You can see in her face, the hard life that this woman has experienced. You have conveyed a great deal in this image and I think that you have every reason to be proud of this work.

You are exactly correct in your surmise; you hit the nail on the head.

She objected and never exactly gave me permission, playing hide and seek with me, but when I had taken just a couple of photos and converted them to b&w in camera, she sure wanted to see them!

That's the way of the street; sometimes there are false protestations of 'no' just like when I was dating. 

It's a matter of great delicacy to know who is protesting 'pro forma' and who really means it. 

As a teen, it meant serious trouble to make a mistake, and even as a photographer it still can, but not so seriously as a dating male when a female keeps saying 'no, no, no, NO, NO, NO, NO, OH NO, OH NO, don't stop' as females did relatively frequently with many males when I was a youth.

They had to say 'no' to satisfy their consciences so they could reconcile with their parents objections, then if they were 'persuaded' it wasn't their fault!

It's like that sometimes on the street, too.

Someone will say 'no' but you really hear 'pay attention to me' since you weren't pointing the camera at them in any case.

Sometimes those protestations are real, and it's a delicate matter to read them when shooting without a long tele -- like here at 18-26 mm or so/wide zoom territory, and stooped over since she was sitting on the ground, and I was standing (and my knees and hips are shot).

One has to be fast to say 'I'm sorry' when one makes a mistake on the street, and also be prepared sometime to walk away fast if one sees the shot of a lifetime and hears 'no' sincerely at the same time.  The dedicated street photographer not about to miss the shot must take the consequences, which can mean beating a hasty retreat.

Remember the great HCB story.  He took a shot of a farmer with a shovel, apparently with permission or without protest at least, and soon the farmer was chasing him across the field!

Subjects sometimes change their mind. Once a wife gave permission for a child to be photographed and later poppa hunted me up (he was nearby) and threatened to murder me if I ever showed the photo (even though momma was in charge of the child and gave permission). 

I've saved his name and circumstance in case he gets hotheaded some day again. 

Mostly people who threaten do just that:  threaten.

It's the doers who don't threaten who seem to be the dangerous ones, in my view.

They can come out of nowhere, and you're totally unprepared for trouble; they're not subjects, and you have no idea they have animus since they've never had interaction with you before and have some bug up their rear about 'photographers' and 'privacy' rights that is totally legally wrong. (in the US at least).

Baba, here, was a sweetheart.  I didn't ask her age; she didn't seem to understand me too well, but I guess somewhere near the 90s.

Merci pour votre commentaire, Laurent.

jean

John (Crosley)

Thanks for the kind compliment on my work.

john

John (Crosley)

This woman has lived through the great famine (some say a Holocaust which the Russians deny, saying it affected all of Soviet Russia), World War II (with Baba Yar ravine killing field not so far away where the Nazis mowed down Jews and others with machines guns and other means), the rise of the Soviet Union with the theft of the nuclear secrets by Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (Heroes of the Soviet Union with streets named after them, and never changed), the Arms Race, the fall of Communism in 1991 Christmas Eve, (Western Christmas Eve), and finally 21 years or so of Capitalism (of a sort).

Her generous Soviet guaranteed pensions which would have provided her cruises and other amenities, is gone with bank and currency failures, reduced to about $100 a month on average minimum, not enough to pay minimal utilities and even buy food, so she sells on the street.

It's that or perish (or if she has generous relatives, rely on their handouts).

Life has gone full circle for her, from each according to his means, to not much according to her need - promises from the Soviet Union that never were kept -- a sorry plight for the older folks, which pushes so many out on the street selling (but provides some society too, which is not necessarily all bad).

I'm proud of the photo, and proud that I can personally see all this history in her face -- it's not just an OLD face, but a face of history. 

One can synch her face with 20th and 21st C. history books.

In that way, maybe it's more than a photo, but part of a historical chronicle; a monument to expectations that were unfulfilled when a social welfare system for elders fell apart because of fiscal, economic and political failure (I don't blame anyone; that's outside of what I do, I'm not in a blaming mood, plus it's not my purview to do so.)

I read faces, and in Ukraine I read SOOO much in some older faces because I KNOW the history.

john

John (Crosley)

You are very persistent in the desire to take a good shot! :-)

Yes,

john

John (Crosley)

a portrait of - and with - character... i see her eyes, they are so compelling... she has strong hands... i imagine the many summers and winters she has faced... she must have had beautiful hair

I am sure you are correct on all counts.

Thanks for commenting.

I always look forward to your comments.

john

John (Crosley)

like♥♥♥

Love your comment.

john

John (Crosley)