external monologue

strangers

"...The pictures are intimate at the same time they remain mysterious. The bottom line is that every photograph finally makes a stranger of its subject."

that's the closing sentence from a recent new york times review of the latest photography exhibition at the international center for photography. the exhibit is entitled "Strangers" and reflects "the recent revival of urban street photography," according the ICP website. the idea is to somehow blur the line between photojournalism and "fine-art" photography, a distinction i've always had a difficult time making myself. i've often thought that front page photos from the new york times could easily be framed and hung as fine-art. and if art really is about some sort of communication, how better to express that than unstaged, inherently engimatic, journalistic photography?

the review also raises the question of "what can we ever know of somebody just from a picture." the reviewer insightfully notes the way that photographs, by their nature, make strangers out of everyone. capturing a moment of someone's life, without relational context, and often without physical context, has a dehumanizing effect on them. this is why fasion photography is often so effective. fashion photographers cultivate a sense of desire, of envy, in the viewer by presenting a situation so far removed from any sense of personal reality, that one can't help but desire it.

but i have to say that on another level, i strongly disagree with this idea about photography. not that photography can't be alienating, but rather how much a photograph can communicate about a person. that is, how well we can actually understand someone, particularly their feelings at that exact moment, by examining their body language, their facial expressions, and more than anything else, their eyes. i was just reviewing some photographs i took this summer at a wedding and was astounded at the volumes communicated in a glance, a gesture, a laugh. i felt i knew these people better after looking through these photographs than i would have after a 10 minute conversation with any one them. perhaps the old adage, "the eyes are the windows of the soul," is more than just an old adage.