Patricia wouldn't show a squiggle unless it contained layers of inner meanings, Rob. 
Eric, you're just compounding my embarrassment!
Tell you something, though: I feel that the day of 'straight' representational photography, as she was once known and loved, has pretty much passed.
It may be no more than self-projection going down here, but, I for one, feel
almost no desire to record straightforward shots anymore. I feel it's as if we have crossed from classical salon to impressionism, much as with the art world of Paris those years ago. I know that there's just no turning back for me, at least.
On top of that, embracing what digital has brought, the sense of performance developing from score, the jazz-like sense of improvisation on a basic idea has made itself very strongly felt. I really do think of each shot as being just a sort of starting point to something else I may or may not be able to create later on in the process. No, it's not the same thing as spending time in the darkroom: that was another sort of creative process altogether, where the shot was the first thing that came to mind and the darkroom more the process of finishing it to the best one could in line with the original intention behind the exposure. Today, there's even a disconnect between what I think I see in camera, and what I do see on the monitor. There's a sense where the first stage is a sort of recognition of something, and that something revealing itself further down the line and sometimes not as what it has originally suggested itself to be.
I quite like that; in a way it permits that sense of anticipation one had with Kodachrome, where what you shot and remembered wasn't always, by the time the films came back to you,
exactly what you had imagined you'd shot. Surprises are sometimes nice...
Rob
