Body Language and Environment

The interaction of people with their environment is always of interest to a curious observer. Do people have a different posture, body language or attitude when waiting for the bus in a cosmopolitan city than when they are in a rural town? Does the environment predispose to such postures? And, are there postures and body language generic to all people, no matter the culture or architecture within which they proceed with their lives?

I do not know the answer, but as a photographer I find it of special interest to capture people’s attitudes in moments when they become one with the environment or give added meaning to the context within which I aim to freeze the moment on film.

I think such curiosity is also what an artist needs to anticipate the coming together of a moment he needs to be ready to capture. I call it the anticipation of the ”promise of the moment” when one has to be just a split of a second ahead of what could happen and ready to capture it.

…I like to play a game when waiting endless hours in airports: I look at fellow passenger’s facial features in profile and try to imagine how they look as a “full-face portrait”. Then wait till they turn around and see how well I guessed their complete facial features. It is a silly game, but one that, mentally and visually, tests my ability to use a few data points to make projections.

Ok, back to photography and people’s self-contextualization.

This picture is from Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris. The façade of the cathedral is made of statues and head sculptures dating back centuries. I often wonder if over centuries our facial features and body language have significantly changed. Do we still walk the same way folks in ancient Rome, Constantinople or Paris did? Do we laugh the same way? Do our eyes open as wide when we are surprised?

That day I decided to look for people’s attitudes that would correspond to those displayed by statues and carving around Notre Dame. Not an easy task, especially when using a medium format camera with a fixed lens.

Here is what I was looking for: notice the walking movement and body posture of the statue on the façade of the Cathédrale above the left shoulder of the woman—isn’t it exactly the same posture and movement?

I took this second picture in front of the National Palace Museum in Shilin, Taiwan, after seeing an amazing collection of ancient Chinese artifacts and artworks encompassing 8,000 years of Chinese history from the Neolithic age to the late Qing Dynasty. The National Palace Museum and the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City in Beijing, People's Republic of China, share the same roots. They split in two as a result of the Chinese Civil War.
“The Emperor Kangxi and the Sun King Louis XIV" was the exhibit. I knew little about the cultural exchanges between France and China, and my visual and history-based curiosity was delightfully satisfied.The artwork, especially the paintings were absolutely amazing. I was most attracted by the delicate facial features shown in those drawings and paintings. When I walked out of the Museum, I saw this young woman, in a perfect profile pose looking exactly like the painting I had just seen. The resemblance was anachronistically amazing and yet, it was the perfect contemporaneous posture: she was holding an iPhone!

It is always tricky to take B&W pictures when surrounded with snow and having a few structures to break the monotony. Except when there is a barren forest and a “mountain man” in the middle of it! This one is from a snowshoeing trip in Vermont. It is difficult to not think about the adage of “trees and forest”—in this case one wonders if sometimes it is not appropriate to look at both the trees and forest at the same time in order to find a meaning to the larger context or experience the sheer harmony of co-existence.

Perhaps this can be called the ecology of interpretation….

March 15, 2014

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2014