[slidepress gallery=’alexandermendelevich-outside’]
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Alexander Mendelevich
Outside
The project describes an “outside” state. I put the occurring in the field of fantasy, of an “incubator” – the place where emotions, pain, vulnerability and experience are naked, where situations are somewhat absurd, associative, where they echo childhood, and question female and male nature. A play implying the contact with object functions as a search, a test and discovery of various thresholds of the sensuous and an exploration of relations with one’s self and the environment. I make a kind of performance using staged photography and inserting scenes in which distortion or discomfort occurs. And my wish was to show and create by distortion, absurdity, environment cleaning, some true space where I try to exit from the standard representation of a portrait image.
The essay has been published in Japan Media Arts Festival, part of the essay in Stella Art Foundation, Moscow and part of the essay will be published in Wiesbadener Fototage in September 2009.
Bio:
Alexander was born in Pyatigorsk, Northern Caucasus region of Russia in 07/12/1979. After high school and three years at an institute of economy and management he moved (repatriated) to Israel in 2000, and served in the army from 2002 to 2004. From 2004 to 2008 he completed his B.F.A. study in Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem (Photography department). Alexander has held exhibitions in Israel, Japan and Russia.
Related links
Editor’s Note: Please only one comment per person under this essay.. Further discussions should take place under Dialogue..
Many thanks… david alan harvey
I don’t get it. Weird. What is the point?
I am speechless
They all got posture problems ;)
Sorry, being serious now, I think this is a very personal interpretation of what is written in the photographer’s statement, I can’t find (for myself) pain, emotions (not strong ones anyway), vulnerability, nor an echo to childhood, not mine anyway. Conceptual photography, I admit I have my problems, limits, of relating to it.
the images that echo childhood work quite well for me, in fact I think they are comical in a way that allows for the disarming of issues so that a move toward grasping/processing them is possible..many of the other images do not have this effect on me and fall flat in my eyes..but i’d love to see a tighter edit and then deeper investigation into the former..
Not sure that I can relate to this essay (I’ll have to spend more time with it), but I do find it very interesting. The juxtaposition of #8 & #9 is hilarious – I’d love to have a diptych of them on my wall!
Couldn’t get past image #10.
No thanks.
hey all. longtime reader here. first time commenter.
i enjoy this series for many reasons. i love the awkward postures, the unique use of props, the mix of emotion, intrigue and humour. i also find the lighting very crisp and clean which i find fitting for such portraits. i also enjoy the transition between closed eyes to open. i would also like to see a tighter edit, however. well done, alexander.
I coudn’t get past the text, Cathy!!!
Alexander, you have a good control of lighting, and a sure hand on staging your subjects, but again as so many times with essays on BURN, the text almost sounds like a warning we will need the proverbial thousand words to get the worth of these pictures.
Er…. We (or someone) should do the talking, not you!
Really funny…
i just realized im out of coffee…
but i dont care…
this essay is still funny….hilarious…
thank u…
i needed a good laugh…
laughing……:))))))))
Doesn’t compute with me. Straight over my head. No idea what’s going on. But I’m only just recovering from severe swine flu so my brain is still rattled.
feel like there’s more interesting challenging staged stuff out there than this.
funny how we succintly comment on this essay and elaborate much more on better pictures and ‘to stage or not to stage’. but i guess, no GNEWS is good GNEWS. not much more comments for me.
Nice one David !
This essay will get the comments flowing I can assure you, very provocative.
It gave me a good laugh, now I know how to carry my fruit when I’ve no room left in the camera bag…..
LMAO …………. genuis …………
over my head….zoooom
Oh man! This one is just begging for a 1500 word poem by Bob Black! ;^}
(I kid, Bob. I kid!)
Well, I’ll be. Jim and I agree totally on something.
I have up to this point refrained from offering any critical comments. Sometimes better to say nothing at all if nothing good to say, but….I am left disappointed and dejected after this essay. I know there are no rules or bounds in art however this post-modern stuff has been done to death. What is the point? Am I informed, am I moved, am I left with questions about myself or society. No. We are beyond post-modern. We need post-post modern, this is as example of Boomeritis, naked narcissism as Ken Wilber would say. I need more. I need raw emotion, spirit, pain, suffering, joy, ecstasy, awe, wonder, information at least, something….
BOOOM. Really truly awesome. Addictive. Outside of this all. Boom.
Alexander – eb tvoju, molodec. this is the nail to many coffins. :)
Wow, how odd. I love it. I’m so happy that I don’t really understand this. Alexander it’s such a great piece. Well crafted, I don’t have a clue what all of this means but there’s something here I have to accept.
Thanks,
Paul
ground breaking work you should be member of magnum
An alternative……………….
http://www.artgallery.wa.gov.au/exhibitions/ballen.asp
http://www.edelmangallery.com/ballen.htm
I have nothing against staged, conceptual, post-modern, non-traditional, edgy explorations in photography. Anyone who has read my comments over the past months would see that. And I realize that Alexander is receiving international recognition for this series. Good for him! But this just doesn’t make it for me.
I’ve had to ask myself why and I’ve come to realize that it is just too self-conscious for my taste. There is too much of a sense of the photographer having come up with a great idea for a project and then trying to find some way, ANY way, to demonstrate it in images. I see a sameness in these images that just doesn’t keep my interest. After the first three I truly got tired of seeing yet another young person pictured with his or her eyes closed, as if that were enough to imply “echos of childhood” or “emotions, pain, vulnerability and experience.” Yes, many of Alexander’s models appeared uncomfortable in their skin but that alone is not enough to make me believe that they feel “outside.”
I would have hoped for a deeper exploration into this universal feeling of being an outsider. I’d love to see Alexander keep working with this idea and see where he can go with it. He’s obviously a gifted young photographer. It will be interesting to see him evolve.
Patricia
29 and up were okay. The ones before though were so overacted and contrived, maybe that was the point, but so not something I can look at too much without just seeming too fake to handle. And why so many photos? 34? that seems too large of an edit for a normal attention span. -Lara
I really, really enjoyed this. #6 and #26 I think are what won me over. However, I think I agree with the others in that this kind of conceptual photography can be hard to relate to, especially because this site seems to be frequented by people who try to tell a story, not create a fiction. Or at least I prefer reportage, and story-telling to the more academic areas of photography. But I think Alexander must be really commended here, because it is very good, I rarely like this type of work, and almost didn’t associate with it because it was very different, but then it was so good I couldn’t deny it. I also have to echo the comments of a tighter edit.
Having looked at these pictures several times now, and having read and re-read the blurb, I can say without doubt that I will not be looking at them again any time soon.
This may well be a direction that some photography is headed, and that’s probably a good thing, but it doesnt appeal to me and I can find no part in it that would inform, or add to, what I do.(or maybe it has)
Luckily photography is still a broad church and us pagans can still happily lurk at the back playing with our alchemy and reading entrails.
PEACE
John
Why shoot this? I watched this just before I was going to go to bed. I’m afraid to now.
am i wrong for thinking this was funny?! i found myself chuckling at a couple of the images… and then i read the photographer’s accompanying text and became totally baffled! that text made NO SENSE to me at all!!! maybe im just tired! i think the images could stand alone by themselves well, no need to think you have to try and flesh them out with deep words!
anyway, amusing!
where do i apply to get those 5 minutes of my life back?
I for one enjoyed this essay. Number 10 – the one with the fish sure gave me a good chuckle as well. Inevitably this type of essay will provoke a discussion on where fine art photography is heading. That’s to be expect here.
What does not win me over with this essay is the photographer’s statement, which I found unclear. Had I seen this work without the statement, or with a strong supporting statement, I probably would have given it a much more positive evaluation, but I feel a disconnect between the statement and the pictures, and a lack of logic in the statement itself.
Having said that I feel there is something to this essay and it made me reflect. To me, the merit of this particular work was primarily that I found the process of evaluating it both intense and provocative.
“A nose that can see is worth two that sniff.”-Eugene Ionesco
“Living is abnormal.”-Eugene Ionesco
“people standing in lines discovered three terrible truths:
1. Money is real.
2. The people standing in line next to you have different abilities.
3. There are not 3 kinds of sausage but 33. Or even 333.”–Vladimir Sorokin
Ok, so I PROMISE I will not post a 1200-line poem again (even though i was VERY TEMPTED to post Vladimir Mayakovsky’s play “Bedbug”) because I do not want to incur Michael or Herve or Steve wrath again ;)))….but i will post a link at the end ;))…
First of all, let me congratulate Sasha on being published here. Frankly, I loved it. And I will TRY to offer a perspective into which people can ‘view/see’ this essay and maybe re-appraise their thoughts. First of all, for me it is impossible to view this essay without thinking of Theatre, particularly modern, post-modern, absurdist theatre as well as the great Russian tradition of theatre. Call me the Inspector General, but when i first looked at this essay last night, I immediately thought of Gogol’s The Inspector General, Mayakovsky’s The Bedbug and Ionesco “The Bald Soprano”….this is not ‘documentary’ photography, it is not ‘reportage’, it is not ‘street photography’, it isn’t even Freudian, introspectionist conceptual photography. It’s theatre, and I think can be view, appreciated and really enjoyed within the framework of contemporary theatre, or even the history of performance art, which just happens to be ‘documented’ with a photograph, as were most of the pieces performed in the 60’s and 70’s in the infancy of the performance arts movement.
but, it is incredibly funny and actually quite self-deprecating. I can’t believe that so few have tapped into it’s brilliant and absurdist humor. The pic of the guy with the mirror shaving his back (god damn guys, who hasn’t looked at their back in the mirror and thought: what the fuck is that odd island of growth doing there??). Actually, i saw all the pictures as if photographs from a staging of a play, and in that perception, that perspective, they spoke to me. Then again, i LOVE theatre and love reading plays and love going to see them. I wish to add as well that Russia, and russian artistic and literary history and orientation, cannot be understood without appreciating the richness and importance of the Theatre experience. It is with this perspective, that I also see Sasha’s essay as being connected to: the strange, and silly and hilarious and absolutely abnormal and odd ‘joke’ that the living experience, that each of us experience and is such a rich and vital part of theatre, particularly modern theatre.
Why must a photographic essay be about the ‘moment.’ the vitality, at least for me, of photography, is that as a medium it continues to grow and expand and reach outward to include the intersection of ideas and art forms and history that other forms of expression (theatre, fine art, literature, music, film) already traverse. Yes, this is NOT a magnum essay, nor is it documentary work or journalism, nor is it (to me at least) navel gazing. It’s a funny, sometimes brilliant, sometimes boring, series of theatrical images that mine someone’s experience of living and seeing and acting and playing and remembering. I remember the first time i saw Ionesco’s play THE CHAIRS in university, 1/2 the audience walked out….and then i thought, damn, when did audience loose their sense of the playful….photography has grown past the need for a consideration that is universal in application. Each photographer needs to focus on that part of photography that makes the best sense. For some, it’s the refinement of the ‘image’ (beautiful pictures) for some it’s the versimilitude and documentation of the moment (documentary, journalism), for some it’s the rejection of style or the abundance of style, for some it’s theatrical, visual language, for some it’s the idea of conceptual architecture, for some it’s just family albums….
for me, the essay is akin to experience a great modernist play, all that absurdity and humor that really speaks to the iconography of our lives and our thoughts and the absurd experiences that happen to us and they we get ourselves caught up in…if your’ve seen a play, think of that when yu look at these pictures….
is this kind of work the kind of work that sticks with me in the gut or soul?…probably not, because for me, there is still not enough ‘sadness’ or ‘loss’ to remain stingy my gut, but the work, for me, is strong enough to make me smile and say ‘that’s funny’ or ‘that’s right’….are some of the images weak, for me yes, is it a bit too ‘repetitive’ (in the sense of stretching a point), yea, for me, but do i appreciate and value this, did it make me think: wonderful theatre, yes….
What i do, however, lament is that Artist statement. As a writer and a photographer, I just get really frustrated by the way some use art-speak to mine the vitality of what already exists in their work, and by extension end up undermining them. There is little of the absurd in the statement…..UNLESS, the statement itself is a characateur, an absurd decoy, a joke itself that minimics all the silly artists statements that seem to come boiling up from the underground of the artworld and photography world….and actually, that’s how i read the statement, as part of this absurdist theatre….maybe because im reading Sinyavsky’s GoodNIght now, im under his influence, but, i think, actually, the statement might just be part of the grand guignol humor that exists in this essay….
Sasha is Russian….and to understand the tradition of russian art, russian photogrpahy, russian literature, russian life, one must also understand that absurdity and humor lay at the nexus of the experienced life, and the artistic life too……..
i think it’s a decent way to think, relating the work to Ballen (though, i prefer ballen of course), but each artist attempts to noose the live lived through the prism of the camera in their own way….for me, the work is just as universal as NG work, but in a much different way….then again, as i said, i love the theatre and performance art….
it is a shame actually,…not that people don’t like this work (each of us reacts to work in their own way) but that, what seems to happen often at burn now, is that people rather arrogantly and obnoxiously dismiss work or make fun of others, just because it aint their thing….
http://www.sovlit.com/bedbug/
Саша.! :)) Здравствуйте. Мне очень понравилась эта история фотографических и я любил, что он напомнил мне о таком исполнении искусство жить и театр. Он был похож на большой театральной играть, и я любил, что иконография заполняется с абсурдным юмором и реальностью и фрейдистской символики. Кроме того, он посмотрел, как весело фотографировать.
Спасибо за очерк. Я посылаю вам поздравления и уважение. Все самое лучшее,
bob
I have to say that to my own surprise, I enjoy this essay. Wether deliberate or not, I find it very very funny. A poke at all of us and the absurdities of our own lives. Some of the little visual jokes are so under-stated, yet right on. I enjoyed the open eye photogrraphs more than the closed eye ones.
The photographs have what seems to me to be a very Eastern bloc feel. The sparce use of colour, very stark compositions etc, combined with the tongue-in-cheek expressions of his subjects and sense of the absurd that seems to be a part of the culture.
I don’t think Alexander was trying to say anything terribly complicated here, perhaps I’m wrong. I think he is just having some fun poking fun at the human condition. I love it.
Thankyou and congratulations Alexander. I love the work on your site. You have vision.
i didn’t read the artist statement (hard and fast rule now), just the comments; the comments made me almost not bother with the work. Glad i didn’t make the mistake of letting the comments or maybe the artist statement taint me. I Love This Work. It was funny and surprising and all well executed. I wondered how many cringworthy permutations could erupt all the way up to the last one.
with the polarity of appetite for this work i can’t help but think a bit about the audience for this work, i don’t think i could really describe the kind of person that would like this work, (i admit i’m weird) but i suppose if you were to show me someone that doesn’t like this work i might likely show you a ‘competent’ photographer, but likely one with a portfolio filled with mostly boring and if not boring still entirely derivative work.
This is bold and original and likely the most fun i’ve had viewing an essay on Burn, i hope more work like this finds it way in, even if it disturbs the lemmings.
joe:
i agree 100%…and i left a long comment this morning, addressing the work (which is really THEATRE, absurdist theatre a la Ionesco) and the comments…but my long comment has been sitting in Spam since 9:30 am. …an…HOPING soon david and anton retrieve it….
(david/anton, when u retrieve my comment from this morning, please delete this note)…thanks so much…
running
b
Here is my comment from this morning…i fished it out of Spam….please delete my note above, so the 1 comment rule is not violated, thanks…
bob
==================
A nose that can see is worth two that sniff.”-Eugene Ionesco
“Living is abnormal.”-Eugene Ionesco
“people standing in lines discovered three terrible truths:
1. Money is real.
2. The people standing in line next to you have different abilities.
3. There are not 3 kinds of sausage but 33. Or even 333.”–Vladimir Sorokin
Ok, so I PROMISE I will not post a 1200-line poem again (even though i was VERY TEMPTED to post Vladimir Mayakovsky’s play “Bedbug”) because I do not want to incur Michael or Herve or Steve wrath again ;)))….but i will post a link at the end ;))…
First of all, let me congratulate Sasha on being published here. Frankly, I loved it. And I will TRY to offer a perspective into which people can ‘view/see’ this essay and maybe re-appraise their thoughts. First of all, for me it is impossible to view this essay without thinking of Theatre, particularly modern, post-modern, absurdist theatre as well as the great Russian tradition of theatre. Call me the Inspector General, but when i first looked at this essay last night, I immediately thought of Gogol’s The Inspector General, Mayakovsky’s The Bedbug and Ionesco “The Bald Soprano”….this is not ‘documentary’ photography, it is not ‘reportage’, it is not ’street photography’, it isn’t even Freudian, introspectionist conceptual photography. It’s theatre, and I think can be view, appreciated and really enjoyed within the framework of contemporary theatre, or even the history of performance art, which just happens to be ‘documented’ with a photograph, as were most of the pieces performed in the 60’s and 70’s in the infancy of the performance arts movement.
but, it is incredibly funny and actually quite self-deprecating. I can’t believe that so few have tapped into it’s brilliant and absurdist humor. The pic of the guy with the mirror shaving his back (god damn guys, who hasn’t looked at their back in the mirror and thought: what the fuck is that odd island of growth doing there??). Actually, i saw all the pictures as if photographs from a staging of a play, and in that perception, that perspective, they spoke to me. Then again, i LOVE theatre and love reading plays and love going to see them. I wish to add as well that Russia, and russian artistic and literary history and orientation, cannot be understood without appreciating the richness and importance of the Theatre experience. It is with this perspective, that I also see Sasha’s essay as being connected to: the strange, and silly and hilarious and absolutely abnormal and odd ‘joke’ that the living experience, that each of us experience and is such a rich and vital part of theatre, particularly modern theatre.
Why must a photographic essay be about the ‘moment.’ the vitality, at least for me, of photography, is that as a medium it continues to grow and expand and reach outward to include the intersection of ideas and art forms and history that other forms of expression (theatre, fine art, literature, music, film) already traverse. Yes, this is NOT a magnum essay, nor is it documentary work or journalism, nor is it (to me at least) navel gazing. It’s a funny, sometimes brilliant, sometimes boring, series of theatrical images that mine someone’s experience of living and seeing and acting and playing and remembering. I remember the first time i saw Ionesco’s play THE CHAIRS in university, 1/2 the audience walked out….and then i thought, damn, when did audience loose their sense of the playful….photography has grown past the need for a consideration that is universal in application. Each photographer needs to focus on that part of photography that makes the best sense. For some, it’s the refinement of the ‘image’ (beautiful pictures) for some it’s the versimilitude and documentation of the moment (documentary, journalism), for some it’s the rejection of style or the abundance of style, for some it’s theatrical, visual language, for some it’s the idea of conceptual architecture, for some it’s just family albums….
for me, the essay is akin to experience a great modernist play, all that absurdity and humor that really speaks to the iconography of our lives and our thoughts and the absurd experiences that happen to us and they we get ourselves caught up in…if your’ve seen a play, think of that when yu look at these pictures….
is this kind of work the kind of work that sticks with me in the gut or soul?…probably not, because for me, there is still not enough ’sadness’ or ‘loss’ to remain stingy my gut, but the work, for me, is strong enough to make me smile and say ‘that’s funny’ or ‘that’s right’….are some of the images weak, for me yes, is it a bit too ‘repetitive’ (in the sense of stretching a point), yea, for me, but do i appreciate and value this, did it make me think: wonderful theatre, yes….
What i do, however, lament is that Artist statement. As a writer and a photographer, I just get really frustrated by the way some use art-speak to mine the vitality of what already exists in their work, and by extension end up undermining them. There is little of the absurd in the statement…..UNLESS, the statement itself is a characateur, an absurd decoy, a joke itself that minimics all the silly artists statements that seem to come boiling up from the underground of the artworld and photography world….and actually, that’s how i read the statement, as part of this absurdist theatre….maybe because im reading Sinyavsky’s GoodNIght now, im under his influence, but, i think, actually, the statement might just be part of the grand guignol humor that exists in this essay….
Sasha is Russian….and to understand the tradition of russian art, russian photogrpahy, russian literature, russian life, one must also understand that absurdity and humor lay at the nexus of the experienced life, and the artistic life too……..
i think it’s a decent way to think, relating the work to Ballen (though, i prefer ballen of course), but each artist attempts to noose the live lived through the prism of the camera in their own way….for me, the work is just as universal as NG work, but in a much different way….then again, as i said, i love the theatre and performance art….
it is a shame actually,…not that people don’t like this work (each of us reacts to work in their own way) but that, what seems to happen often at burn now, is that people rather arrogantly and obnoxiously dismiss work or make fun of others, just because it aint their thing….
http://www.sovlit.com/bedbug/
Саша.! :)) Здравствуйте. Мне очень понравилась эта история фотографических и я любил, что он напомнил мне о таком исполнении искусство жить и театр. Он был похож на большой театральной играть, и я любил, что иконография заполняется с абсурдным юмором и реальностью и фрейдистской символики. Кроме того, он посмотрел, как весело фотографировать.
Спасибо за очерк. Я посылаю вам поздравления и уважение. Все самое лучшее,
bob
1)Not one word on Alexanders’ work itself, Bob. all cultural, referential and ultimately peripheral to it.
2) true to form, you have to lecture (a shame!!!) others on how they viewed it, how they participate on BURN, and I suspect, if we let you, how they view all art since Lascaux to Alexander yesterday…
and of course:
3) did you notice no one asked their comment to be deleted, because they did not write more than one, to begin with….
Okay.
So I’ve tried to put my initial reaction (absurd, to use Bob’s word) aside after reading Joe and Bob and view this in a new light. No dice.
Welcome back Joe, by the way…
I find the pictures overly-lit and un-subtle and well, sterile for an essay supposedly concerned with a universal humanity. Someone in a photo class I was in last year turned in an portrait series shot similarly, yet it was funnier, more absurd than this.
But then again I’m just a derivative lemming. :)
I hate to be such a pessimist, but I remember when Burn had real photography…
This is branching out into the stuff nobody understands and kinda feels like they wasted their time to watch. Is the point to be weird? Is the point to go over people’s heads and make them not so excited and hesitatn when they see a new essay pop up?
Expression of the artist’s something or other…? Yeah, not a fan of this sort of expression – and it seems as though the majority who decide to comment agree. I, for one, hope Burn gets back to real stuff soon…
Hi all,
I’ve been following burn for a long time but this is my first comment.
First of all I have to say that I always read the photographers statement first, then view the images at least once, the photographers link, follow the comments for a couple of days and then return to the essay/photograph again. I imagine this as a fair approach.
This essay really intrigued me. The statement I found total art-speak and meant nothing to me. The images though are well constructed, consistent with this concept and imaginative. I did find them funny. At least some of them. A lot of repetition and arguably too many of them but still admirable work. I like contemporary art and am not into theatre but I get bob’s point. I find it a bit stretched but the second viewing was different for me, albeit not more entertaining.
You do need a vision and conviction to do anything of quality. Even if I studied them for days, I do not think I could be able to continue this story in any meaningful way even though technically is not so challenging. I take Photography as a medium of expression and a very inclusive one at that. This is not my cup of tea but it made laugh and I love the the absurdity of life. This is photography, good photography but not everyone’s photography.
Congrats Alexander and thanks to all the guys above that keep up the debate.
(I’ll try to make it shorter next time, promise)
This piece of work needs attention, contemplation, sensitivity and certainly a great deal of openmindedness. Hm, I guess I lack this sometimes myself so my first reaction was more of ignorance and irritation.
This is “art photography” and I don’t blame anyone who gets no access to this work. Guess I am part of the lemming family.
Bob offered a way to understand this work better and Imants link to Robert Ballen fits pretty well I think. Thanks for that! Imants, can you explain a bit about Ballen’s work and the conncetion you see?
To venture in Alexander’s visual world is a challenge, but it offers a new view. I like that a lot! Great job!
And yes, no doubt Alexander has a great career ahead!
Hope I can go to Wiesbanden in September to see some of the images for real.
Reimar
For those that dont understand the work, are confused by it, bored by it, dont like it – all of those reactions are legitimate.
But examine that reaction; really look at yourself and try to determine what you are reacting to/against specifically. Then ask yourself what it is that might have motivated the thinking person to undertake this work and the curator to publish it.
Then try to look at it again. This is learning, people; sometimes it’s uncomfortable.
bizarre
I agree that these characters appear to be naked with this flat lighting in their absurd situations. I don’t understand why some of them have their eyes open. Would be much easier to create a strong essay if all of them had something obvious in common.
Stunning photographs. I love it. I think you must have been inspired by Avedon’s In the American West Series.
As to the comments above, I think people need to expand their horizons further. I find the rejection of this and other good works I have seen on burn only shows how limited people’s exposure to good photography is.
I was rather confused about this work. Not sure if i can speak too much about it but visually the images are quite interesting and funny, which partially goes against what Alexander says in the statement. Nonetheless congrats for getting your work featured on Burn!!
I first saw this set of images a month ago when it was published here. Having since spent the best part of three weeks in my childhood home, I can say that I can’t relate this essay to my own childhood in any way whatsoever.
But I can relate to 1/3 of the pictures shown via my work as a photojournalist. The facial expressions and postures in those images remind me of a few assignments I have done for NGO’s working with the severely disabled. Specifically they remind me of an afternoon last year when I took pictures of a 22 year old Michael and his carer. He loved his basketball, Fish & Chips and his paddling pool. Not an easy afternoon.
People see different things in pictures for different reasons. This time I did’t see what the author intended, I saw something else.
All the best
Petteri
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