I don't have such an intelligent comment as Phil's for this, except that it is beautiful and I love the contrast of the face with the rusty form in the foreground. It's mysterious and anonymous at the same time.
A stunning image, Tim -- it borrows from both art deco and surrealism in creating a strange blend of reality and fantasy. I shared this experience with you -- this image was made during a class project while we were classmates in a digital photography course at the Santa Fe Workshops last year. My own version of this same stencil, which appeared on the side of a caboose in Santa Fe's outdoor "railroad museum," is posted athttp://www.pbase.com/image/20737861.
Both your picture and mine work because of how we abstract that face by taking it out of its context, yet they work in entirely different ways. The colors are different because when you shot your image, the face was in the shade, and when I shot mine, it was in the sun. You strikingly juxtapose that stencil with a metallic structure in the foreground -- it reminds me of a stylized guitar. I shot mine framed by bolts and and slashed by white diagonal striping on the side of the caboose.. Both images ask questions of the viewer, each of in their own way. There's a wonderful lesson here for all of us -- it's not WHAT you shoot that matters. It's HOW and WHY you shoot it that makes all the difference.
