The Artist, 2012
I guess it was
inevitable as I got onto this jag of photographing people that I would
eventually be compelled to turn on my friends. It had occurred to me some time
ago that there are all sorts of people in my life who have interesting looks or
other aspects about them or their style that make them interesting. But because
they’re people you see all the time you never think to actually photograph
them.
For example, while
driving to a client meeting recently I happened to look over into a field of
flowers adjacent to our local farm market. Carolyn, the woman who runs the
flower section of the market was walking into the field. I immediately saw the
potential for a photograph, as they say, “worthy of a painting.” The color of
the light, the shadows, the lines, the colors of the flowers, Carolyn’s shape;
everything about the moment screamed for documentation. But I had a meeting to
go to, was not dressed to go tromping in the field, didn’t have the means to
achieve the elevation I would have wanted to compose the picture and, perhaps
most importantly, didn’t have my camera with me.
Since then I’ve had it
on my list to start photographing the people in my life. People like the flower
lady mentioned above. The café owner, cook and waitress at the place where we
have breakfast on Sunday mornings. The kid who waits on us at the neighborhood
restaurant where we’ve been going every Tuesday night for years for cheap
burgers. We all have people like this in our lives. They all have stories.
There are interesting visual aspects to each of them. Why not photograph them?
One day last week I
happened to be having lunch with the eminent illustrator Walt Taylor. We ate in
a café where the walls are covered with his drawings. I suppose you could say
he’s their resident artist, though I noticed that resident artist status
apparently doesn’t confer free lunches.
Walt’s famous among his
friends for pulling out a camera and shooting quick candid photos. You never
know what malicious use he’ll make of them. You might end up on Facebook as the
punch line to an embarrassingly obscene joke or, as happened to me, have your
earnest portrait put into Taylor’s Photoshop grinder and come out looking like
an axe murderer who can’t keep food from dribbling out of his mouth. I’m sure
he had something suitably devious in mind when he pulled out his camera at the
cafe and started snapping pictures. It was only the arrival of our friends Sue
and Freda in the midst of this little episode, I’m sure, that spared me from some
grotesque Taylor-esque depiction.
I, on the other hand, seek
only truth and therefore choose to portray my friend as he is, in all his
megalomaniacal glory.
Hahaaaa--what a great portrait of Walt. I've never met him, but I feel like I know him from watching his amazing art all these years. You totally captured his sense of fun here.
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