Let Me See!!! (First of a Series)

The caption states it all for this 'street' photo taken in Odessa,

Ukraine, first of a series of 'peeking' photos. Your ratings and

critiques are invited and most welcome; don't forget to

consider 'humour' in rating. If you rate harshly or very

critically, please submit a helpful and constructive comment/Please

share your superior knowledge to help improve my photography.

Thanks! Enjoy! John

There will be no lack of subjects for this series... Good idea, I will be watching for the next.

Thanks.

 

The next was posted almost simultaneously.

 

A photo of two boys (who had been fighting) looking at a cell phone (probably a camera phone, and who knows what photo was on the camera phone?

 

You can take your own, and we can have a competition. What do you think? Maybe even a new category for the Request for Critique page.

 

John (Crosley)

It's a well documented social phenomenon: cell-phone, small fast-food/drink table, their expressions, her clothing. While these guys look funny and natural (as do those other two girls in a similar shot of yours), you should try shooting similar situations in Romania, where the snobbish, empty feeling of these relations becomes truly apparent (and depressing, if you have to live with it).

You should read The New York Times today which explains in an article on Health about a tiny section of the brain which is especially developed in humans, great apes, and maybe whales and elephants that serves as a signal controller between the body's needs and the 'feelings' one experiences about those needs.

 

It suggests, indeed posits, that 'feelings' (including empathy) are part of the mediation process which is particularly well-developed in the human species. I commend that article to you and to others; it signals a new understanding of human interaction and may have implications for all sorts of understanding of normal and abnormal human behavior as well as social/antisocial behavior.

 

Perhaps I have a particularly well-developed form of empathy, honed by years of sitting in my law office listening to the stories of lives interrupted by (often foreseeable tragedies that often were unredressed, unless I could somehow intervene -- and in some cases any intervention and redress was simply impossible -- which is one reason lawyers either become 'hardened' or 'slightly crazy' or both and a major reason many who are not affiliated with insurance companies who handle insurance work quite the practice of law.

 

But empathy in such a profession is something that tangibly 'sells' as who wants an attorney who simply dismisses their 'stressful situations' as 'just another case' to them and doesn't seem to 'understand'.

 

For just such a reason many of the best trial lawyers are quite empathetic people, although some of the very best also are motivated by huge greed, which is a result of the contingency fee system, a system, however, that is the only one that works, and which is a major reason insurance companies want to outlaw it (it provides quality counsel -- attorneys -- for the poorest, while the insurance companies would never place a cap on how many attorneys they could have fight the claimants or what they could pay them to resist even the most just claim). It's just one more case of 'everything for us (the insurance companies, and nothing for you suckers (the claimants/plaintiffs/applicants who are injured/disabled, etc.)

 

And it seems that empathy is something that is transferable. I had it when I began taking photographs as a youth, because I went to school at Columbia College, Columbia University, which overlooks Harlem, which then was amazingly poor, underpoliced, often on the verge of riot (occasionally rioting -- see my 'Black and White From Then to Now folder), drug dealers on many corners, the drug addicts stealing lead sewer waste pipes from inside building walls to sell for their 'fixes' to that when residents flushed their toilets it ran down the inside of building walls (yes, indeed, that is true, I was there and saw it and smelled it), and I tutored young children at 147th and Lennox Avenue in the midst of all this -- and later it was revealed that New York City police 'cooped' at night instead of policing -- that is, they parked their cars uptown of Harlem, slept in their cars because they were up all day, and posted a lookout car in case an intruding captain from elsewhere or a police chief should come along and discover them parked and snoozing in their cars instead of cruising the streets of Harlem.

 

Is it any wonder that New York's black citizens felt somewhat more than discriminated against?

 

I grew up in the midst of that, and my physical health often was threatened because I was there physically, but 'white' and 'white' was the 'enemy', -- someone to be 'frightened' and possibly 'chased' if possible, so I learned all sorts of 'feints' and 'bluffs' and 'evasive' maneuvers which have served me well through my remaining adult life, starting with a short sting in Viet Nam (as a civilian with a camera, then as a photographer at riots, then as a journalist writing). Later that 'empathy' translated and those learned 'skills' turned into successful assets as a trial lawyer -- and people wondered how I came about them so well, as I did myself. (Now I have analyzed it, I think successfully).

 

But, it turns out, empathy by itself may be something that starts at a far earlier age, and may be well-formed in early youth, though it can be interrupted by events in later life or better developed by those same events taking a different turn.

 

Again, I commend the NY Times, (electronic edition) and that article.

 

You'll be glad you read it.

 

Thanks for commenting.

 

John (Crosley) 2-7-07 (I'm out of your time zone)

 

 

I've written next above about the brain's mediation process between the body's wants and needs and 'feelings' that the brain's mediator mechanism places on them which we describe as 'feelings', and I note especially the words 'snobbish', 'empty', and 'depressing' in your comment.

 

Is it possible, that as an empathetic individual, I might look at the same or similar scene in Romania and not have the same feelings as you? And is there some other reason for your feelings than those I experience?

 

After all, as my photos well document, there is a sort of endless surrealness (surreality) to all of life, and if one looks at the end product (unless one is a 'Believer' then it all amounts to 'nothing' anyway, except for the grand experience of having lived life (or the not so grand as the case may be).

 

Sometimes life gives us an opportunity to choose how or in what way we have an ability to perceive or experience that life; other times that is taken away from us. In some cases (my own for instance), there can be many strikes against, but it still can be a personal decision; one can rescue oneself from that 'emptiness' feeling by searching for greater truth -- one just cannot look for or expect to find 'greatness' in a small restaurant looking at cell phones . . . . without being confronted by what some may perceive as a dreary ordinariness (or less, an emptiness, perhaps).

 

What you choose to do with that is something warranting further discussion, I think.

 

Yours is a provoking comment; I urge you to comment again as often as you wish; these pages are for those with 'inquiring minds' [no apologies to the 'National Enquirer'] who don't necessarily want to hear sycophancy.

 

John (Crosley)