59-0479_971220-04-06-67-NYC
What may be home and familiar to someone may seem so far out and exotic to someone else. What’s even more interesting is that when that first someone decorates her home with exotic furniture and fixtures that become part of her daily mundane, so in fact it is an exotic setting that looks just so to the visitor, but not to the inhabitant. This particular corner of the apartment is not so exotic as the rest of it really is.
The woman in the photograph is not the dweller of this Bushwick, Brooklyn loft, but a good friend of hers. What prompted this particular image to happen in this particular way is just as much a group of “exotic” elements that occurred spontaneously. The woman was simply trying on an “exotic” dress of her friend, when I noted that the color of the dress would look great in front of the blue wall. The man on his knees was in conversation with her when I interrupted to suggest the photograph of them together. I also suggested that we switch on the lamp that was just previously sitting on top of the overturned pot. However , the cord was too short, and we had to move the lamp down and closer to the wall. He got on his knees to plug in the lamp, and I saw an “exotic” moment happen and I triggered the shutter.
It was a birthday party where in fact about forty people were in the space behind me as I took this photograph, and a few others after it. Just like you can't see how exotic the rest of the apartment is, you also can't see the activity going on just a few yards away from the camera. Such is the power of photography to isolate and to select.
It was during a period of two years when I was doing formal portraits at parties and would take a substantial amount of portable photo gear along to each and every party I attended, and they were many. My template was to pose one or two, or more people together at a pre-selected location, and would photograph the individual or the group with total disregard to the background activities of the party, allowing surprise elements to shape the scene. It was a combination of controlled foreground with uncontrolled background, invariably yielding dynamic images.
In this case the background was the simple blue wall, but my lackadaisical attitude towards the existing “chaotic” elements, in this case the lamp off its pedestal and the young man on threes with a hand on the wall, is what makes this image more interesting than the one that followed, with the two of them posing. In fact, as I am writing this, I am not even certain what the following photograph looks like.
The woman’s hands are completely hidden, giving more relevance to his right hand that is either resting on a blue wall or pushing into a blue infinity. His bald head against the shiny green cloth of her dress, the positioning of his feet, the overturned pot, the plastic draping separating the bedroom, and not least the distortion created by the wide angle lens are all elements that give this image a sense of the exotic if not quixotic, of something mystical or ritualistic, or incomprehensible. It seems all posed or manufactured, where in fact it was truly a simple mundane moment captured by the magic of photography.
Bushwick, Brooklyn December 20, 1997
(written November 20, 2006)
