Why Did She Look Back 15 Years Later?

It snowed on the mountain. On days like this I usually catch up with the much needed organization of my art studio. It is a place where nowadays sculpting, painting, photography and writing seem to co-exist, although without occasional cleaning it is easy to see a rabbit skin find its way to the painting area, or pieces of wood I collect from the desert pile up to make entire areas impassable.

So, I decided to clean a few shelves to store new materials. I came across a box of negatives and prints that I have been carrying with me now for a decade or more from state to state, and house to house.

It was time to dedicate a few hours to the content of the box.

.. Most of the negative strips have a sticker at the end such as “France 2009” or “Mexico”. But many do not. I eye-scanned the strips against a table lamp and recognized most of them. Then looked through the printed photos.

All of them are 8x10 and of course B&W. More importantly all of them are “seconds”, as I rarely throw away a print. I feel like my goal has always been to capture a moment, and even prints that are not technically or aesthetically as good as I like them, they still capture that moment.

So, out of many I recalled and recognized, I found a few that totally surprised me! Truly, I have no recollection of these shots, although I remember where and how they were taken because other shots from these days made it to my books, blogs and exhibits.

The most delightful ones were of street mimes from Barcelona. The prints were not well-done, but I saw potential in the negatives that I had not had taken time to explore 15 years ago.

So, got the negatives dusted and cleaned, loaded the strip on the tray on my 1950s Hansa enlarger, and decided to spend the morning printing.

Photo One: This was that barrio where the mimes were performing. I had no memories of this moment till I looked at the print. Clearly it was a typical afternoon when people were enjoying a glass of wine and a perfect place for mimes to show their talent.

Photo Two: This close up has bad lens aperture and speed, since the face of the woman on the forefront is washed out while the other one’s is too dark.  But the expression is there, and I decided to dodge and burn. After a few tries, I called it the “Spanish Yin and Yang”!

Photo Three: This one has a bad composition but I saw how the sequence had evolved (will explain in a minute.) A #4 filter under the enlarger lens gave better tonal distribution and contrast.

Now, about the sequence. The 4^th negative was a shot that has been appreciated by viewers around the world. It is the following:

So, now after 15 years I came to recall and realize how that street photography session took place. It seems that I walked around the barrio, took a close up, and waited for them to get into the full act of carrying umbrellas side by side.

… One question remains: in the last photo, did the woman on the left purposefully turn around to help me with the shot?

That, I will never know!

January 14, 2018

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2018

PS/ This is my 200^th entry on this blog and the first one of 2018….