Smooch Spot!: Beautifully Anonymous...

I am feeling a bit down in the dumps today. A little melancholy about the holidays ending. Maybe I am missing all the extra time I had with my family and time spent behind my camera with great clients. Things tend to slow down in the portrait photography business this time of year and don't seem to pick up much until Spring. It is a bit of a clean up and organizational period for many of the photographers I know and most need it after the hectic schedule during the last few months before the new year.

So what's my point you ask? Stick with me, I will get there....

I was soul searching today so after settling the kids down for their naps, I decided to peek into my e-mail to see if anything was there to cheer me up. Lord, did I find something... Lord, were you listening...

I opened a link sent from a friend about an amazing story on you tube. The story is about a young man from Chicago who upon doing some research for a city he once lived, happened upon an amazing find. He discovered what appears to be the complete works of Chicago woman (a working nanny) from the 1950's who in her one day of spare time per week goes into the streets downtown and shoots photographs. LOTS of photographs. Street style photographs (which we are now calling "photojournalistic style" photography). Her portraits are nothing shy of amazing. From what I can tell they are mostly in black and white but a few are in stunning color. Regardless of her options, I am so glad she shot mostly in black and white because the of the beauty and timelessness it portrays. Never ending, never aging. Simple elegance and pure truth. There is no hiding in black and white and it is sometimes very harsh in it's portrayal of the human face (although it can sometimes soften it as well). Shadows, edges, curves and light is what you see and it is up to the viewer to imagine the color for ourselves. I LOVE these things about black and white photographs. There simply is no faking it. Vivian Maier was a fabulous photographer with an uncanny eye for composition and subject and has deeply touched me in a single moment with her work. I felt so many emotions as I looked through her work online. Sad, scared, angry, glum, a little happy sometimes and venerable. Mostly I felt how I imaging those whom she photographed felt at that exact moment. This is the goal of photojournalistic photography and Vivian Maier nailed it. Again and again and again... Did she know how good she was at her craft? Did she care? Due to the fact that most of her film lay untouched and undeveloped and many of the portraits were neatly tucked away in boxes, I doubt she cared much. The art of photography was for her alone and unless she was tortured about sharing it, and that was her reason for not, I believe that the art was for her alone. For me, that is stunning and sad but glorious at the same time. She did take many self portraits however, so perhaps she was hoping to be found one day...

Is there anything that you have or do that is solely for you alone where it does not matter if anyone else knows or cares? In our time of facebook, twitter and other social networking , reality television and everyone knowing (and sometimes seeing) everything about one another, is it even possible to have such secrets?

Something to ponder...