Street Santaby
Joey LawrenceComment by e301: I don't go a bundle on the processing - puts it more into the field of painting than photography, for me. Of course, the detail and all that stuff is everso well done, and the knackered quality of the geezer's clothes, and his little prison tattoo add a contrast to his ;'cheerful' santa hat. I think I don't like the gaze into camera - inevitably, that becomes a performance thing - and the shot becomes a simple portrait. Perhaps I work too much with performance, but perhaps an idea of the photographer not being part of the story - and you undoubtedly are, when your subject fixes his gaze on you - is old hat, and belongs to a documentary idea that the world has left behind; nevertheless, that engagement pushed an absence of authenticity into this shot: he knows you're shooting, and so what he
is at this moment is perhaps less real.
My first reaction was that I wanted to know more of his environment - and then, of course, from the posters on the lamppost, and the newspaper box (?), it is clear enough. People, I think, don't exist in isolation - a difficulty I have with more portraits. People are part of their environment, and both contribute to it and belong to it; and without it, however battered and entrancig their face, I find them rather meaningless, perhaps. I'm not sure, as I write, that that's anything to be proud of.
This might well be the most interesting shot in this challenge, however - I'm just expressing the thoughts that spring to mind from it - and anything that prompts thoughts like that
has to be a good photograph. I just want more documentary (which we get little enough of here), and less 'study' - of which we get far too much, though rarely with this kind of love.
Photographer found comment helpful.
