Thursday, June 19, 2008

Gawking

Yesterday I had an hour or so to kill downtown. I decided to spend a few moments of it watching the kids and tourists at play at Crown Fountain in Millennium Park. Chicago has changed quite a bit in the 24 or so years I have lived here. It has suddenly turned into a tourist destination. It reminds me of a lonely girl who suddenly finds herself popular and doesn't quite know what to make of it all.
The nice thing for me about Crown Fountain is that tourists with cameras are everywhere so I can photograph total strangers and no one seems to care. It helps me overcome some of my inhibitions about taking pictures that make me feel as if I am up to no good and need to shoot photos on the sly.

Gawking

If you look at a larger size of this photo what do you see? A curly haired kid in yellow Crocs running in the water. An older woman taking a family photo. A guy talking on his cell phone. A woman wearing a t-shirt that says "Goddess of Victory." What do you think that means? A mom helping her daughter change clothes. An entire little world preserved in a frozen moment of time. What more can you ask of a photograph?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not much actually, wonderful candid capture.

JL said...

I like photos/frozen life such as this. They are immortal.

What are they doing?

Why?

Monet said to Manet, "Paintings must have lives", if I recall the quote sort of correctly, meaning that what is in the painting/artwork must engage the viewer not just once, but every day.

One must always find something new, something different, something challenging.

That is the measure of a work of art.

This one qualifies. At least by my standards.