'Trudging II'

As old age creeps inexorably, joints age with accompanying pain, and mobility slows

almost to a crawl, but the human spirit wills going forward until the inevitable day

when it is stopped, but not yet for this man, who in spite of his stooped back and the

long tunnel ahead, keeps moving on with his shopping bag and groceries. Your

ratings, critiques and observations are invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly,

very critically, or wish to make an observation, please submit a helpful and

constructive comment; please share your photographic knowledge to help improve my

photography. Thanks! Enjoy! john

John, you have once more depicted a hard existence with such care and respect that is arouses compassion and sympathy/empathy. Who of us hasn't had aching feet and the tired to the bone feeling? Yet, I suspect not many of us to the degree that you have depicted here. 

I usually find these images of yours hard to look at, but they are always moving.

Amy

Any, I think the simple secret to these photographs that you find so hard to look at is that I simply do not avert my eyes when I see an interesting scene that involves poverty and/or hardship.  I practiced law including law of disability and injury often involving extreme hardship for my clients for almost two decades, and if I refused to look at their hardship or passed judgment on them as people for their circumstances, I would have represented them poorly.

Just because someone has hardship and/or no money does not mean they are improvident or morally deficient.  Life has strange ways of picking and choosing among us and bestowing favors on some and the opposite on others.  Sometimes it rewards those who cheat and steal cleverly.  This man surely wouldn't know, I think.  He's just left with his trudge which will end some day when he trudges to his last day, then his expiration will come.

As all ours will.

Mine.

Yours too.

Maybe that's what makes them so hard to look at.

We try so hard to get through life's little things, then to be confronted with the inevitable.

That is life's ultimate ignominy.

Maybe.

At least consider it.

Thanks for the comment; it's been a pregnant one.

john

John (Crosley)

Very nice piece John, I like your essay with this as well, the story behind the image.

I think what pulls out the emotion in this piece is the marble wall, that on the surface it looks like shit smeared and he is moving against it. The way he is hunched over is how I appear him walking, lumbering, shuffling, the weight of his body pulling him down.

The purple light in the right corner could be a new beginning, I only thought of that for a second, this man is doomed, and you represented so well, bravo!

There are a lot of Polyannas who look at photos who ignore that one part of life is what you call 'shit-smeared' -- more for some and less for others.

In the end, at the very end, it evens out, maybe except for those few who die a luxury death in their sleep surrounded by relatives or loved ones.

But death is death.

It creeps for some and gallops for others.

For some it comes far too early . . . . brain cancer attacks small babies, as in a relative's child, as well as for a wife of mine, then age 29, and it attacks the aged too.

We think of life as having a 'time' but there is no time.  It just comes.

Life is what we make of it today.

What we do in spite of life's setbacks.

And how we handle the shit stains that come with it.

A viewer I know well looked at my photos and turned his/her nose up at every single one except a seaside sunset.  It turned out that Polyanna had no expectation of seeing any 'beauty' or 'insight' in a photo beside some good composition and bright, saturated colors.

I try to stand for the opposite, though I can take the former quite well.  I just don't because almost everyone can . . . and I can take these well.

Thanks for the able comment for which I'm thankful.

john

John (Crosley)

Two Metro trains (not coaches) transferred their connecting passengers at the other end of this popular corridor and they whizzed by this slow, slow, slow, moving man.

I waited.

And waited.

And respectfully waited.

For the moment.

He moved, and I feared my moment would be lost, as I wanted to show him in isolation, but the time came when the rushers had completed their rush by, hundreds of them, and he was still there, farther advanced, but still against the wall, pushing his bag in front of him.  One more step and the shot would be lost.

I put love into this shot, lots of thought, and some serious processing to make it 'just right', knowing it would not be earth shattering, but deserving of respect.

Thank you for according it that.

And letting me know your thoughts.

john

John (Crosley)

Good on you for seeing the potential here and doing whatever it took to capture it.  I find it a sad state of affairs when other people can be so caught up in day to day life as to not notice someone who would so greatly benefit from a small token of acknowledgement i.e. "can I help you with those".  Again, you did a splendid job and I "tip my hat" to you (that is of course if I were wearing a hat :-)

Craig

Thank you so much for the acknowledgement.  Such words mean much more than any '6' or '7' rating, as I think you know.

It sometimes takes as little as 1 second or less to take a photo such as this; sometimes it takes a long while, planning, waiting, hoping and sometimes just missing a hoped-for scene, but thankfully not here.

Words of encouragement such as your go a very long way.

Thank you again.

john

John (Crosley)

A striking image. And especially poignant with the back story you described.

One thing that caught me was the converging lines of the tiles. Converging in space of course but, perhaps, suggesting something more mystical - this old boy's time is almost up - the converging lines maybe hint at his 'time' here is converging too.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this image but it's undoubtedly striking.

Season's best,

Adey

You're not at all reading too much into this photo; you're reading it exactly as it was seen through this photographer's eyes.  He (it's a 'he') pushed his bag ahead, then trudged ahead, then pushed his sack ahead, then trudged some more, but made remarkable progress after climbing some steep steps to get to the passageway he's in, which is over another, intersecting, major Metro train line, but with an escalator this time to carry him down to his next train (thank God!, as it's a very big distance down).

Some Metros have wonderful, fast escalators, not as fast as they run them in Moscow on which these were modeled almost exactly, especially this particular station, but some stations have escalators some places and stairs others, so they cannot be called 'handicapped friendly'.  In fact the former Soviet Union is not 'handicapped friendly' or 'disabled friendly' with stories of people living in sixth floor walkup flats and never going to the ground in years.

On the other hand, every so often rescue teams in America are called to some idiot who has fed and bathed his obese wife who's been stuck on a toilet for two years, and they have to crack the toilet from around the wife to get her out to take her to the hospital, as she may weigh 600 or more pounds, and one day sat down and just got stuck.  Even a toilet for the unprepared can be a handicapped trap.  And these stories recur in the US press every year if you read fully and carefully.  At least those in sixth floor walkup flats in the former Soviet Union can get around in their flats and are not jammed into a piece of porcelain!

One thing; making the old walk like this man here keeps them fit and keeps them from wasting and getting fat like Americans, Germans, and Australians!

Best wishes for a New Year and thanks for the comment.

john

John (Crosley)