I just HAD to try one more time to see if I can post something here without help, all on my own etc. If I mess it up, please help ;) This is one of my earliest shots, from somewhere in the late 804s. It4s actually part three of a series, but the one I like best - I think maybe because of the way she holds her hand behind her back. Camera: Contax MA137, lense: Zeiss 80mm, film: TMAX 400 - no details recorded.

-- Christel Green (look.no@film.dk), August 07, 2000

Answers

"Why do I like this?"

Because you have an active imagination. I had a conversation yesterday with a very successful commercial photographer who is retiring and now wants to be an artist. I don't think it will work. He's had a career of making images that deliver a very specific message that you can "get" in the 1.7 seconds before you turn the page. He can't imagine deliberately making an image that has conflicting messages, or at least grants the potential of personal interpretation / relevance to the imaginatively well endowed viewer. He wants to make pictures that are "beautiful", and that's all. No option to say "yes beautiful, and _____" (Fill in the blank with your favorite second thought, i.e. "sad", "tragic" "sexy" "ironic" "funny" "wierd" "scary"... well maybe he'd allow sexy, he did work in advertising).

A successful art image demands constant re-thinking, has relevance and asks questions that shift as your perspective on life shifts. Just as age, finacial situation, love life, spiritual awareness and other human concerns color our perception of experience, so does good art reflect those shifting perspectives as these conditions change throughout our lives, and even through out the day... t

-- tom meyer (twm@mindspring.com), August 08, 2000.

As Tom said, it leaves room for the viewer's imagination. It also has those grains of sand to get the pearl started, little things which don't quite fit, like the left hand, the tilt of the head and the trees all leaning over to the right.

This could just be the way your granny walks. But we don't know that.

-- Struan Gray (struan.gray@sljus.lu.se), August 08, 2000.