grey day
by PennyStreet

Comment:
Beautiful photograph in any context, but apt for this one. It's hard to depict the dark days of depression in a single image without being trite and obvious. You've managed it though, and your photograph is a lesson to all those who produced nonsensical staged caricatures of what they imagine depressed people look like. Your photograph does a very good job of showing what depression feels like. In my top two. Thank you.

liz
by skewsme

Comment:
The first brown ever, so far as I know, that involved the gutting of a snook as part of its workflow. Original, admirable, delicious. Thank you.

cattails
by posthumous

Comment:
The Humble Art

This is a quite brilliant, incandescent essay on the nature of photography and the photograph.

You ask questions that everyone who professes to be a photographer ought to be absorbed by, obsessed by, animated by, driven by, haunted by.
Alas, very few will care about your cerebration of photography at all, and those who might have profited most will care the least of all.

Two of your observations I call out for special applause:

â€Â¢ Photography celebrates the ‘accident’ of art.
At its best, photography is a transformative process, and the photographer does well to keep the loosest possible control, ideally bordering on the negligent, over that alchemy.

â€Â¢ ‘Isn’t it thrilling not to know what a photograph is?’
Yes, because it inspires curiosity. Curiosity is the most important thing in art.

This is my choice for best essay. It̢۪s the best short essay on photography that I̢۪ve seen anywhere.

Thank you.

1
by salmiakki

Comment:
Yes I second the comments of mariuca especially her reserving this one for special applause:

It's epic. Really a perfect conception and composition.

The essay overall is painted with fondness, and absent sentimentality. Lovely judgement to approach close enough to be among those present, but not so close as to impose yourself. A very English trick that I as a Colonial can never manage (I'm either not there at all, or leaving muddy footprints all over the place). Thank you.

52 51 50
by Melethia

Comment:
Neun. No BS â€Â¦ neun. Thank you.

pression3
by vawendy

Comment:
Yes. Very interesting picture. Thank you.

depression7
by vawendy

Comment:
I shared the reaction of mariuca quite closely. I didn't feel any convincing connection with the title 'depression' (not that I need to, in order to appreciate your photographs). Some held my attention longer than others.

The person with shadow is really quite excellent; it's remarkable how much more complex the shadow makes the viewer's reaction to the person.. .the feeling I got was that either the person or the photographer was saying, "You don't know me. You don't know what I think; what I feel." It's a sobering lesson for the viewer prone to over-hasty dismissal (e.g. me). It's also amazingly Picasso-like! The form and the lines (especially the shoulder line), the posture, the tilt and rendering of the head; it's all pure PP.

But the most interesting picture in the essay is this one:

That one is worth following somewhere, so if you ever felt moved to pursue that thread I'd be an excited follower.
Thank you.

Message edited by author 2014-03-09 19:37:46.

ubique
by herfotoman

Comment:
Weird looking guy. Very handsome, of course, but he does look a wee bit shifty. Here one moment, gone the next. I don't trust okes like that.

A collection of names
by herfotoman

Comment:
Haha! Very, very clever Herman. And also very beautiful. I've never seen anything quite like this, although it did make me think of Man Ray's astonishing transformations, and also of a German bloke whose name escapes me, though it may have been von-Something, and who did the most remarkable studio botanical studies that transformed the plants into gilded sculptures. So I think I'm safe in saying that your essay photographs are transformative :)

As for the names, a very imaginative presentation device. They all seem to me to be very well chosen epithets. I note that posthumous is depicted as spectacular and full of something, while I am characterised as noisy but quite empty in the centre. So you've got a remarkably accurate insight there all right.

A most enjoyable essay, the substantial artistic credentials of which should not be underestimated just because of the light-hearted fun you had with the names. Thank you.

Time Flies
by RKT

Comment:

Top Ten. Thank you. 10.