My Photographic Lineage With Lisa
Monday, November 12, 2018
Lisa |
Often when
I manage to talk to my granddaughters I tell them that in dance there is a
continuity/legacy that comes from dancers that came before. These dancers
taught dancers, who taught dancers who eventually taught my granddaughters.
That one of those teachers is Desirée Dunbar who was taught by Judith Garay who
was a prima ballerina for Martha Graham’s Dance Company.
I tell them
that through the Calculus is becomes evident that if you pore a bottle of
Scotch into the Pacific Ocean it would be feasibly possible to find traces of
it sometime later in the Atlantic Ocean.
What all
the above is about is that yesterday it was Lisa Prentiss’s birthday. I first
met her around 1980 in a dark club. She was sitting at a table and I was enthralled.
I had a little Minolta imitation of a Leica with me so I asked her if I could
photograph her.
Those first photographs were followed by many more in a time
spread of about two years. With Lisa I experimented with different films,
lighting techniques and approaches. I was particularly pleased by a series
that I shot using fast Kodak Ektachrome with a 35mm camera pushed with only the light in her bedroom. These pictures are as close to as I
ever got to shooting that sleazy/nasty/and many other words ending in y that is
boudoir. I believe that these pictures as dark as they are, may be edgy and not
boudoir!
Today (I wrote this blog yesterday, November 11, I will be taking photographs of a beautiful woman who is 61. I previously photographed her when she was 22. This time around there will be some strong and plentiful photgraphic lineage in the works. There will be a bit of Lisa in the room, in my memory and perhaps even in my shutter finger.
Happy birthday Lisa.