The Eye of the Beholder

Today I was thinking about how we choose things to photograph. It’s something I often think about since photography (and art) is all about choices. Choices of subject, frame, time and more all affect the final image. Take these rocks for example, Kurt and I chose them because we thought the subject looked like something else. He saw a frog sitting on a gorilla in his and I saw a petrified stone man in mine. I took several shots but selected the frame with the bus so you can see how giant my stone man is by comparison.

And now I have to think about man’s (and this woman’s) tendency to anthropomorphically transform just about anything. Easy to see the anthropomorphic in Hans Bellmer’s work with mannequins. It starts pushing in my salt and peppers shakers that are modeled as weeping onion faces or in Tru restaurant’s chef Rick Tramonto’s tattoo.

As the song says, “Ca me fait du mal jusque a jongler” (It hurts just to think about it).