note: original file deleted in 2009. The above is approximate

On a scale of 1-10, how interesting is this montage? 1-not at all

interesting, 5-interesting, 10-fascinating. Thanks

A lot of these people are young.

 

When I looked at the photo, because the caption was titled "Americans," I asked myself, what is different about these people, because they seem all the same. Many of these people appear young.

 

As I looked at the photo, and thought about it, I kept asking myself, what is it about their appearance that is supposed to show me what is actually different about them? I did not find myself coming up with an effective answer.

 

Perhaps text accompanying the photos might make it more intriguing. If I were to know some unusual fact about all of these people, and why they are together in the group of this photo, that would be more interesting. As it is, the photo seems to pose a question with the caption, but I do not recognize the answer.

 

As a collection, by itself, as a photo, the only thing I noticed about it was that I did not like the browner background as much.

 

I really feel as though I want to see a greater variety in the appearance of the people in the photo; although, I recognize, by thinking about the photo, that I do not know a thing about any of them.

 

I think the photo would be more interesting if one of the blocks was missing the photo of a person. This would draw more attention and help us to ask questions about why one person was missing from the collection. It might help us to think even more about the people in the photo.

 

Overall, okay, but some unanswered questions from a viewer's perspective. Thanks. J.

 

On the scale you mentioned, I would give it a three or a four.

John, thanks for all the time you took to make your comment. To reach an audience extending beyond this community, it looks like I have my work cut out for me, doesn't it.

Doug, don’t sell the idea short just yet. My first question was what connected these people, why are they grouped together this way but if you start looking at the images individually that seems to become less important.

 

As photographers, especially if we are photographers that like to photograph people, we are lookers, you might say voyeurs. That is why we take photographs of people to keep them around. In private we can stare at a photograph as long as we wish without repercussion. I do not understand photographers that do not photograph people other than to assume that for them it is just too traumatic. I do not understand photographers that would not love to have faces to study. I look at the individual images and make assumptions, it doesn’t matter if the are right or wrong, about the individual. Maybe I connect individuals. I consider which ones I find attractive, unattractive, maybe which ones I would like to know more about or which ones I would likely avoid. It’s like looking through someone else’s high school annual. I am not sure that we can look at photographs of faces without make assumptions. Who do I suppose was the most popular, voted most likely to succeed, the class clown, the geek squad. As people and especially as photographers it is built into our DNA to look at people. This is a very interesting project. Thanks for sharing.

Gary, thanks. I haven't given up on this, not by a long shot, but I needed to know how it would be perceived by someone outside of my own community of university students and professors. John (and Mark, on an identical posting) pretty much confirmed my suspicions that an outsider would not have nearly so much interest as one of the persons photographed, or as a friend of one of the persons photographed, etc. That's not saying they wouldn't have any interest at all for, as you are rightly saying, the world is full of people who enjoy looking at photographs of other people.

 

My starting point was to collect as many faces as I could, and present them on a single sheet of paper as one unified collection, thereby linking them visually as they are likewise linked in life either to me, as the photographer, or to the university where I work where we are all part of the same academic community. None of the comments so far have surprised me, and through them I'm able to see where the work falls short of a wider audience.

 

The secondary pieces may be leading me into a different direction, though. Although I understand that an academic population is not hardly representative of any one country's demographic, I'm leaning towards making this, or attempting to make this, a work about the unity shared by people from diverse backgrounds in their roles as citizens of a larger entity, i.e., of America. The citizenship of many countries has a physical commonality that isn't easily missed, but not so in America, where immigrants from every country in the world can be assimilated.

 

This is a long term project, though, and still in the experimental stage where I'm trying out different ideas as I go along, but you are right about one thing: The joy for me is in studying the photographs after they've been made.

5

Awesome! Thanks Rajat