Person on a Bikeby
slipintoshadowsComment by ubique: Of all eleven hundred images, this one is my favorite. It's because you have used the reflection to establish your photograph not as an image of something (a two-dimensional representation of a moment), but instead as a portal, a kind of passport, to the actual, three-dimension experience of the thing itself. A palpable recollection of the real thing.
Let me explain further. René Magritte's most well-known painting is the one of a pipe, with the legend "This is not a pipe"
("Ceci n'est pas une pipe"). It's called
The Treachery of Images. His point of course is that the painting is not really a pipe, but merely a picture of a pipe. So far so good?
Now, a direct photograph of a person on a bike is the same; it's an image of the thing, not the actual thing. But this photograph, your photograph, is more than that. It uses another medium, the reflection, to make some magic. So what you have is an image of a puddle (not an actual puddle ... touch it; you won't get wet), but the person on the bike is now real! It's you - or more accurately, it's
me ... it's everyone who looks at your photograph who's ever ridden a bike. If we rode a bike by a puddle, and we looked down, this is exactly what we saw. It's the real thing! By showing the person on the bike at
one step removed from the literal photograph, you have liberated not just the image, but the viewer.
To me, that's what a camera is ... a wonderful, magical tool used to assay the imagination. Alas, most cameras are wasted on photographers instead.
10. And the small but perfectly proportioned Order of the Thumb:
Photographer found comment helpful.
