Cover image for photo narrative "Le Flaneur - Sneak Brim". It's highly recommended that you wear a cowboy hat while viewing this essay. Follow the link below to see the full story.
Truly a wonderful journey Henry. Paul is correct in that the Bauldelaire prologue is essential reading, such an apt insight. For me, you have managed to blur the physical division between viewer, artist and subject. That delightful space that makes the all important connection and becomes the mystique, the art, the binding link. Strong imagery, hats, an open ended portal for the viewers to channel their experiences into your creation.
I spent a few days looking at this essay and finally figured out its mystery! It is really a 3D experience.
The viewer of the essay is the photographer! The viewer is accompanying the flaneur, a few steps behind him, enough to incorporate all the experience in one frame.
It is one of these fantastic stories of infinite reflections and echoes written by a Borges for instance.
This shot for me is surpassing them all although as you can gather I am quite taken by the entire experience. There is a feeling of old world values, of a certain elegance of being intertwined with a stubborn intellectuality.
This beautifully presented and thought provoking essay of shadow tag is fun and at the same time somewhat menacing. Thoughts of stalking crossed my mind. But it then conjured Azazel the evil, body- usurping fallen angel in the film Fallen (starred Denzel Washington). I look through your essay again to the strains of Time is on my side and wonder about all these infected peeps.
I've had a quick look and I like it. It's got that HF combination of gentle wit and sharp (in the figurative sense) photography. But I'm very busy just now ... I'll be back in a day or 2 to leave you a proper comment. Thanks for keeping this terrific exercise alive for us, and for submitting interesting stuff!
.... OK, back now following another inconspicuous stroll through your streets, looking over your shoulder.
This work is really fascinating Henry. Yes it's great fun on the superficial level, but there's way more than some street fun on offer here. The viewer must read the Baudelaire quote, and your own introduction, before setting out. Both are an indispensable guide to the journey.
The most captivating thing for me is the way that your shadow somehow inhabits the people on which it is placed. Maybe it's the recurring Tilley that gives your projected self a spectral quality. Maybe it's the fact that CP Baudelaire primed me for that illusion. Whatever, it's irresistible. I tried looking start to finish, and then finish to start, and it works either way ... you have projected yourself not onto but into your fellow travellers. The photography's very good, the craftsmanship's got your usual effortless touch, but the photography never gets in the way of the essay of Le Flaneur.
It's photography elevated into language; pictures to words; symbols to thoughts. You've made a sort of Rosetta stone for photographers. Thank you.
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