****Once again, Henri would be smiling at this one. You find the decisive moment within a geometric framework that expresses a timeless story. The child's leg is stopped in the air as he steps off the curb and takes a glance at the four adults who are watching him pass by. They are waiting for a bus --a phalanx of adults, a rigid, immobile wall of abstract pillars, echoing the trees and posts around them. None of them move an inch -- they let the child do all the moving here. This picture is all generational contrast, one generation waits patiently, but the other has no time to waste standing on a curb waiting for a bus. There is strong abstraction through vantage point and back lighting and there is a strongly incongruous contrast in both scale and motion here as well. I love the contrast between geometric rhythms here -- the vertical people and trees and post and the horizontal curbs and hedges and walls. In the end, you express a strong human value here, Jen -- the joy of being a free spirited child in a world of duty bound, and oblivious adults.
cold indeed. not only cold in a literal sense, although the monochrome and stark simple detail instantly makes me shiver, but also in a metaphorical sense. you have framed a cold, hostile space, occupied at this moment in time by 5 people who don't even recognise each other's presence. you also shoot with 4 of them facing away from YOU and that adds further to that feeling of an isolated world where each man is for himself. food for thought, Jen. thank you!
Guest
03-Jan-2006 12:12
Somehow this image conveys the cold to me instantly. Wonderful light!