Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: RSL on November 20, 2013, 05:39:40 pm
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I like the first a lot.
Tells a nice little story.
Though you might have put a coke bottle in instead of the lamp at the left. :D
The second is interesting to me, since there is this cable - does it lead to a laptop behind the bag?
Or does she charge her coke bottle?
She doesn't really look like the average restaurant laptop user ...
And I like your treatment of the noise.
Cheers
~Chris
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In the first one I take that to be Rob C's coke bottle (or the ghost thereof) at the left, eavesdropping on their conversation.
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Love 'em. Aaaah the horror of ordinary life. The second one is particularly good.
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Love 'em. Aaaah the horror of ordinary life. The second one is particularly good.
Horror: you might have been light-hearted in posting, but I think you were actually very accurate in your summation.
The first lot looks bored to death with its membership, whereas the poor woman in the second looks on the very verge.
All in all, cheers me up no end about my own situation.
Like I remarked elsewhere, Russ has that gift for finding indelible slices of Americana. I think it's done so much better this way than à la Parr, with all the attendant flash and brash. Beneath it all I sense sympathy, unlike the exploitation I see in the Parrs. Probably speaks more about my own ambivalence to the genre than anything else - like it but can't totally accept it. I suppose it's comparable to coveting one's neighbour's wife, but not literally, in my case - the wives, I mean. But I don't live in Beverly Hills.
Rob C
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Thanks, all.
Right, Chris. There was a laptop in that bag, and by the time we left the restaurant the lady had it in place and was banging away on it. She doesn't look like the laptop type to me, but I guess I'm easily fooled.
I don't know, Rob. I've always had mixed emotions about Martin's work. He certainly takes advantage of the silliness of life, but I don't get the feeling he's making fun of his subjects. He's exploiting them, but that word can have more than one meaning. I don't feel arrogance in Paar's pictures, but I also realize I could be wrong about that. He always seems to be teetering on the verge.
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"Unsuspecting" is an odd choice.
unsuspecting |ˌənsəˈspektiNG|
adjective
(of a person or animal) not aware of the presence of danger; feeling no suspicion: antipersonnel mines lie in wait for their unsuspecting victims.
I'm curious how the reception of these images would differ had they been presented as "People in Restaurants".
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Not sure, Kirby, but the reason I titled it that way is that somewhere on here -- can't find it now -- somebody, probably Eric, wondered if I was on the road shooting pictures of unsuspecting people in restaurants. I want to be sure everybody understood that that's in fact exactly what I was doing. The weather was too crappy to be shooting unsuspecting people on the street.
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Russ, I think Kirby is likening you to "danger," or perhaps even to an "antipersonnel mine."
I don't think you pose an actual danger to the people you photograph, but I do think you are very perceptive about what is going on in their lives (except maybe for the laptop).
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifmRgQX82O4
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifmRgQX82O4
The amazing thing, Chris, is that Russ is actually in every single scene of that film. But it's always his assistant who is asked to stand up. Russ must go through a lot of assistants! ;D
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Nice!
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Horror: you might have been light-hearted in posting, but I think you were actually very accurate in your summation.
The first lot looks bored to death with its membership, whereas the poor woman in the second looks on the very verge.
All in all, cheers me up no end about my own situation.
Like I remarked elsewhere, Russ has that gift for finding indelible slices of Americana. I think it's done so much better this way than à la Parr, with all the attendant flash and brash. Beneath it all I sense sympathy, unlike the exploitation I see in the Parrs. Probably speaks more about my own ambivalence to the genre than anything else - like it but can't totally accept it. I suppose it's comparable to coveting one's neighbour's wife, but not literally, in my case - the wives, I mean. But I don't live in Beverly Hills.
Rob C
No Rob, I wasn't being light hearted. I really meant the horror thing.
When I wrote my comment upthread, I actually typed out but then deleted a couple of sentences about how some of Russ' work reminds me of Parr. The reason I deleted was because I think that Russ makes images which stand on their own and do not need to be compared to others.
I personally disagree with you about Parr - when I look at his images yes I see ruthlessness but I also see empathy.