Old work made new
I have been asked to review the past several years of photographic work and to choose 10 photos to publish in a book my photography group is putting together. I had been holding off as I’m not really interested in a book, but today to give it a whirl. Choosing only 10 images from several years of work is a great exercise. It forces me to make a lot of decisions about what I really like most in my work. It also shows me how my tastes have changed - or stayed the same - over time. Finally, it’s an interesting Rorschach test - I never know what patterns will turn up.
What turned up this time is a whole lot of portraits. I don’t think of myself as a portrait photographer - I’ve hated posed photos since I was a child. At 7 years old, I chastised my mother for taking a posed photograph: “That’s not what people look like!!!”. I’ve always preferred candid shots of people, taking them unawares, being themselves. Looking again at the portraits I picked today, none of them are posed. They’re all candid shots I took in a moment when the subject, still relaxed and being themselves, paused to let me take their photo. A little gift from them to me.
Maybe that’s why I like these…
