All the Difference

Quandary.  I have two things about which I can write today, but they have nothing to do with one another.  There is no way to bring them together, so I must decide with which I should begin and see where that leads.  Sometimes, during the course of creation, an idea will occur to me and I find some, even if meager, kind of union.  

I doubt that can happen today.  

I will start with this.  

This is a photograph by Deana Lawson.  It may be Lawson, but I'm not sure.  She is being hailed as "one of photography's greatest portraitists" (link).  I've come to find that some of you heathens do not subscribe to the Times and cannot open many of my links, so I've tried to "gift" the article to you today.  I don't know if that will work, but. . . .  

Included in the article about the great portraitist is this image, which can, I assume, be considered a portrait by what is absent.  The caption for this photograph proclaims that it was taken "during a sun shower in southern Alabama’s Black Belt region."  

"Typically, Lawson’s shoots, which she has orchestrated around the world, can take days or even years, if you include the time between when she meets someone on the subway or the street and when she persuades them to pose as she wants them to: nude, or nursing, or in nature or wearing a gold spray-painted mouthpiece."

I stumbled upon the site of another photographer, Patricio Reig, yesterday (link), whose work I was instantly drawn to, and after perusing his work for a bit, I ordered one of his books (link).  

Lawson's new work, the article explains, is a divergence from how she has been working.  In her new series, she walks into shops that have surveillance pictures of people wanted for varying crimes like shoplifting.  "The Wall of Shame."  She enters with a medium format camera and a powerful flash and snaps photos of the images without asking permission then leaves.  She then prints the images in manipulated form, pictures of pictures.

"Here, she was capturing women in a moment of defiance — allegeddefiance — but also subjugation: They were the accused, the shamed, the unwitting targets of a hidden camera. In the arrangement on her wall, the photos evoked a series of mug shots. None of the women pictured had given permission. The finished work is being shown in Lawson’s debut exhibition at Gagosian, one of the world’s most elite galleries, where it opened in September and closes late this month."

 I think maybe I have found a way to connect the two disparate things I wanted to tell you today. 

I was sitting in the Cafe Strange on Tuesday while the cleaning crew was at my house.  I sat at a long table next to a girl reading a book, a chair separating the distance between us.  She had long, curly dark hair falling in ringlets just below her shoulders, a pair of glasses resting on her rather large nose which was not unattractive.  She was small, petite, and wore an oversized plaid shirt over her yoga top.  She was, I guessed, of Indian extraction. 

Down the table in the opposite direction sat a boy also reading a book.  He looked a little like a downstream yuppie, t-shirt, good hair.  In a bit, he got up and came to sit across from the girl.  He asked her about the book she was reading.  I thought that the two of the were in high school.  Their conversation was rather, like, cool, you know.  In a bit, I realized they had not met until now. 

"What do you do?"

"I am at the university."

What?!  She was a graphic arts major graduating in a semester.  He had graduated with a degree in business.  They talked about books and movies, none of them of any matter, in adult tones and adolescent vocabularies.  He was all confidence.  She was demure, soft spoken, kind.  After awhile, he asked her for her phone number.  Holy smokes, I thought. . . but she declined.  

"Oh. . . o.k. . . . that's cool."

He got up and went back to his end of the table.  I could feel myself blushing.  Then they were each on their phones typing furiously, she with a grin, he not.  

After awhile, they both got back to their books, and I was thinking that was exactly the reason I never have asked a girl out.  If I were that boy, I'd have wanted to hang myself.  I won't chance rejection. 

In a bit, though, the girl got up, packed her things, and walked shyly over to the boy.  I could not hear the words she spoke, but I could hear the shy lilt in her voice.  Then she showed him her phone, and he copied her number into his own.  Well, now. . . a smooth operator.  

I watched the girl leave through the big plate glass windows, and saw her get into a car with a woman I assumed was her mother.  When I got up to leave, the boy was still sitting, typing on his phone.  All I could do is wonder how that would all work out.  

And now, the hook.  If I had been Lawson, I might have given them my card, told them I had overheard their conversation, and would like to photograph them together after they hook up.  

That's what I should have done.  

But I didn't.  And I am not in galleries or museums.  

And that makes all the difference.