PAW 2006 - Week 5
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
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Last Sunday I went to a talk by photographer John Rosenthal at his current exhibit
at Tyndall Gallery in Chapel Hill. As a former English prof, sometime poet and NPR
commentator, and generally thoughtful guy, he's a great speaker, weaving a tapestry of
literature, art history, photography, and observations of human nature, as he discussed his work.
I was struck by one particular item during his discussion of what photography is:
He made the point that, while most people see things in the world sequentially,
photographers have to be able to see all elements of a scene simultaneously.
I think this spoke to me, partly because it's a cogent expression of thoughts about
photography (or, at least, the branch of photography I find most appealing) that have
been floating somewhere around in my own mind, and partly because I see parallels to my
recently-completed dissertation, in which my main argument could be roughly summed
up as "brains don't process information sequentially in different brain areas, they process
it simultaneously in many brain areas." I could even go so far as to say that my chosen
(future) day job as an anesthesiologist could be seen as the medical specialty that shares the
most with this definition of a photographer. This is the nearest I've come so far to finding a
commonality between my seemingly widely-divergent interests. Interesting...to me at least!
Anyway, photo-wise, it was a very nice collection of photos, mostly involving people interacting with exhibits
at museums, zoos, etc. They started life as 35mm film negatives, which were then scanned and printed
breathtakingly beautifully using large format Epson printers on HPR paper (my favorite digital paper).
Relating/re-enacting a conversation from the 1970s.
Two of my three favorites from John Rosenthal's current show:
(1) http://johnrosenthal.com/cityphotos_lg/lg-spec-girl-on-floor.htm
(2)
(I couldn't find the third on his website)
Leica M2 with collapsible 50/2 summitar lens on Kodak TCN400 @ 200.
Light metering courtesy of my Gossen Digiflash with ambient diffuser.
Developing and low-res Noritsu scan by Costco, levels and cropping in Photoshop.
© 2006 Aaron Sandler