One Tooth George
by jagar

Comment:
wonderful, John!

The Push Mower and The Lawn
by Lydia

Comment:
congratulation, Lydia! Very nice!

Girlhood - 1
by LevT

Comment:

Originally posted by insteps: Each photograph on it's own is a story. Interesting how you've included different cultures and places from around the world. The variety of exposure/editing techniques is also a nice surprise. These variation prevent us from becoming to comfortable. Very nicely done! Thanks

Thanks Henry and all. Very true, each photo tells its own story, that's how I was making them originally. As I confessed, I did not shoot specifically for the essay. On the other hand, in the same vein as in the "Boyhood" movie that was my inspiration, I was hoping here that many small stories merge into a bigger story of growing up. The variety of post-processing styles bothered me a little bit, but I was lazy to re-edit them :).

Dispersion
by RKT

Comment:
very poignant story, to which we all can relate. I certainly can, having lost my 90 years old father a few months ago. Thank you.

Black Dogs Are Difficult To Photograph
by posthumous

Comment:
it's not an essay, it's a poem (of course!). And I like how it rhymes visually, with the photos, rather than sonically.

Zama Zama
by ubique

Comment:
the absence of people (owners and customers) in all photos but one is startling. It feels like they (owners) scraped, they built the stores, they put up the signs, they waited... and waited... They were really trying... And nobody came. So they gave up and left. The contrast of cheerful colors and emptiness is almost painful, especially for Africa where we learn of expect people, people everywhere. My only problem with this interpretation is the photo with Lover's hair dressing salon, I wish it was not there :)

The Secrecy of Shadows
by insteps

Comment:
beautiful photography, every photo stands firmly on its own. But in a series like this, we, the viewers, have an additional pleasure of tracing the stated theme in each of them. Like a good jazz improvisation, where every solo takes the theme and moves it in a new direction, sometimes very far, only to bring it back and pass it on.

Oldies but Goodies
by herfotoman

Comment:
of course it is not just the closeup that changes the perception, but the transitions from bright colors to dark and contrasty BW. Worked really well, sometimes it was so hard to believe it was the same image, I found myself going back and forth and checking it :). By the way, in the good old days Soviet propaganda used a similar trick regularly by taking a piece of colorful western footage and then fading it into BW, sometimes even into a negative, with suitably ominous soundtrack behind. We felt so sorry for you guys living in such hell behind a thin colorful facade :)

Thinly Veiled
by FromDaRock

Comment:
wow, this beautiful girl has an uncanny resemblance of the great ballerina Maya Plisetskaya in her younger years!

monument to the planet Clipton
by tanguera

Comment:
congrats Johanna! WTG to cruise an expert challenge within advanced ruleset