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| 28 November 2022 |
C showed up this last Monday in the afternoon for a session in my small studio. I had seen some photographs of Kate Blanchet in the NYTimes Sunday Magazine. For some years I have been taking slow exposure photographs of dancers but I had never thought of using the technique for portraits. For the pictures below I used a slow shutter (Fuji X-E3 and my fave iPhone3G) and jiggled or panned the camera right to left, left to right and up to down.
Last Monday, by virtue of being on a bed with two pleasant cats, but sifting in my mind through the latest chapter of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, I had a strange thought related to lyrics of the Argentine National Anthem.
Sean eternos los laureles
Que supimos conseguir
Coronados de gloria vivamos
O juremos con gloria morir.
Laurels to be eternal
That we knew how to obtain
Crowned in glory we shall live
Or we shall swear to die with glory.
The connection to the above is my disdain for that overused term for photographers and writers, award-winning (which awards?). I received many in my photographic past but like a 19th century American gunfighter you are only as good as your last. And so the implied lyrics of that anthem “and not resting in one’s glories” resolved for me that this morning I would write this and post some of C’s photographs that would not offend the community standards of social media.
And I will not use this now other overused word "stunning" to describe my latest efforts.
