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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Twenty Nine: The Layered Image – accumulating meaning > Shadow play, Baisha, China, 2006
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02-APR-2006

Shadow play, Baisha, China, 2006

A farmer returns from an early morning stick harvest, followed by his shadow.
In this image, the layers move from bottom to top. The bottom layer of this stack is a wall forming a roadway for the farmer. The middle layer gives us farmer and the incongruous shadow. Because of the early morning light, the shadow incongruously lags far behind.
The top layer is decorative crown for the image. The man carries a load of sticks, and giant sticks mimic his pace from the top of the building. The curving roof embellishments seem to echo the forward thrust of the farmer’s leg, as well.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ30
1/320s f/5.6 at 7.4mm iso80 full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto
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Phil Douglis18-Apr-2006 18:23
I love the way you see this shadow, Carol. By using your imagination to turn the shadow around, you have created an entirely different story here. Thanks for making me see my picture in a "new light." (Could not resist the pun.)
Carol E Sandgren18-Apr-2006 17:57
To me, the shadow appears as another character in your image. The man carrying his load is cloned backwards in the shadow on the wall, who is walking in the identical way but in the opposite direction. Passerbys..they do not stop and chat with each other as they must be on their way to have their work done on time. I love the texture of the stone in the wall, as well as the beautifully decoratively tiled "crown" above. It gives a point of reference as to where this is happening, instead of a plain background.
Phil Douglis17-Apr-2006 18:07
I always regard a shadow as an etching, Kal -- our cameras make this transitory, ephemeral thing into a permanent part of its host. And so it becomes here.
Kal Khogali17-Apr-2006 14:26
A very China moment, and it is almost etched in to the history of those walls in the form of the shadow. K
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