Portrait of the Artist As an Old Man**+

The Caption tells the entire story. Your ratings and critiques are

invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly or very critically,

please submit a helpful and constructive comment; please share your

superior photographic knowledge to help improve my photography.

Thanks! Enjoy! John

You are right, the caption tells a story and generally this is something difficult. Good work.

la experiencia la lleva en la mirada, simpatica foto.

 

Cass.

Unlike the protagonist, young Stephen Dedalus, of James Joyce's novel 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' which outlines how a youthful Joyce-like character finally frees himself from the 'bonds' of his native Ireland by strength of travel abroad through developing his writing skills and pursuing his future as a writer, this old man is an antonym -- a man who will NOT escape -- who has no dedalus wings.

 

He undoubtedly has spent his life in the USSR and Ukraine, almost certainly in Dnepropetrovsk and vicinity and has had almost no chance to become Dedalus-like -- literally to free himself, and has, as an artist, become an old man and of no stature at all, peddling his so-so art at tramside/parkside in the city center of Dnepropetrovsk, probably to supplement a meager pension and also to get out and keep active -- an important element, since old men are very rare in Ukraine -- almost all of their ilk having passed on to their 'reward'.

 

So, this caption, indeed tells a story, but more detailed a story than most will understand, and most will assume it's just a clever 'turn of phrase' when indeed it has a deeper meaning, although it does indeed mirror the turn of phrase, however.

 

So, thanks for the nice words about the caption-writing; it's a little-recognized skill, and very rare on Photo.net.

 

(does 'Mir' in your name refer to the Russian word of 'peace'? and if so, how about 'Pep'?)

 

John (Crosley)

..and those eyes don't need a catchlight!

 

(one hopes that when his children embarked on their winged migration to a better future, it was a cloudy day)

 

I could have 'selected' the eyes and highlighted them a little, but I'm of the school of least manipulation. Thanks for the backup.

 

In thinking it over, he probably was a Soviet Soldier and may have traveled the Communist world as a serviceman -- places like Cuba, East Germany, Angola (maybe he was too late for that), but you get the idea. There are a lot of Vladimirs in Cuba, sons of Russians (ethnic) based in Cuba who served there during the reign of the Soviet Union.

 

I once ran onto Muammar Ghadaffi's 'personal pilot' on the street. How do I know? He went to great pains to tell me so. And I believed him.

 

You meet the strangest people. The man wanted to show that despite modest circumstances he was 'more than his surroundings' and thought the Ghaddafi connection would somehow elevate himself - attaching himself to a one-time terrorist did not do the trick with me, however. Ghadaffi blew up the Pan Am plan over Lockerbie and has been an international pariah until lately, but the distinction was lost on that man; maybe he wanted to be my friend, but he failed in his introduction.

 

I go to this place, secure in the knowledge I can leave, and enjoy its culture, because in its poverty, the people have close family bonds -- something lacking in the U.S. where some surveys say many adult Americans have NO close friends (they're tied to their computers).

 

Three is a definite social aspect to their culture that is missing here.

 

We may be 'advanced' in certain aspects, but we are 'missing' in others.

 

But we are 'well fed' -- to excess often, which they only dream of.

 

Thanks for your comment.

 

John (Crosley)

John, I agree completely with the "family bond" point. In non-western cultures, there is a closeness not just with the immediate family but also with the extended family, which you don't find here (at least in the U.S.). But there are tradeoffs, as you mention.

 

(the cloudy (non-sunny) days and children on a winged migration was just a throwaway reference to yet another Daedalus...)

I understood the 'cloudy day' reference was to Dedalus (Daedalus).

 

Otherwise the sun will melt the wax and the high-flyer will plunge earthward.

 

That was why the Joyce character was named Dedalus -- a reference to 'escape' from the bonds of, in this case, his native Ireland, and he did that through his writing.

 

You and I have accord. I hope I didn't give a wrong impression.

 

;~)

 

John (Crosley)

Some pertinent points were made. However, pertinence isn't always what a viewer's eye needs (mine, at least). When I read the title and connected it with this old man's expression, I actually went beyond what has been said above (strong contrasts between freedom & ideals etc), and allowed myself to extrapolate in the same registry, rather than in an opposing one -- in the sense that this man might just as well symbolise Joyce's character grown old -- but still Dedalus, with a more relaxed glance, taken years & years after the casting off of what the author called 'graveclothes' of youth.

This man very well may have cast off the 'graveclothes of youth' as you suggest, or, as suggested above, perhaps being a lifelong resident of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, meant that he never was able to be that Dedalus (Daedalus) character that Joyce wrote about -- that is to say, he never was able to 'act it out'.

 

However, his age suggests that he was once in the 'Red Army' and may indeed have lived in Cuba or Angola or even Afghanistan and/or North Viet Nam, so I should be careful about making presumptions.

 

Perhaps tomorrow I'll stroll down with my interpreter, find this man and have a chat with him (or another day).

 

That'll settle any issues once and for all.

 

Or it may be I chat with him by happenstance on returning to that community months or years from now, but I think I'll just ask him about his history; I think I know where to find him -- among the artists' community -- a place well known to me (and I'm well known to many of them, too -- I think they think I live in Ukraine, which I don't think I do.

 

John (Crosley)