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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Two: Travel Incongruities > Jeans, Tuesday Market, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
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01-NOV-2005

Jeans, Tuesday Market, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

These pants were part of an incongruous row of jeans displayed on mannequins without torsos in one of San Miguel’s largest markets. By taking them out of the context of the marketplace altogether, I try to make them seem as if they are conversing with each other. I picked the two pair with the greatest degree of contrast. The white pair, which enters the frame at left, carries a tag featuring the trade name and a photo of a gasping model. The blue pair seems stretched to the breaking point. The abstracted black background and flow of natural light over the fabric give the illusion of a third dimension. The longer we look at them, the more these pants seem to acquire an incongruous life of their own.

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Phil Douglis02-Feb-2006 01:27
Thanks, Harjtt - sometimes the simplest things can make wonderful images if we can find them in an incongruous setting and then abstract them. Like these jeans!
Guest 02-Feb-2006 01:11
Phil

A cracking shot - it caught my eye straight away. I think you and the other comments covered basically everything I could say. Once again lovely pics through out the gallery.

Cheers

HarjTT
Phil Douglis24-Jan-2006 07:29
You are right, Antonio. Every artist chooses his or her own creative path. Some are purists -- and will not use the camera for anything but recording the subject. They won't use vantage point, frame or composition to strengthen the point. Others, like myself, will use the camera in any way I wish to express an idea. But I hold my use of post processing to enhancement -- not manipulation. Others, such as yourself are just as open to conceptualizing after the fact with Photoshop as before it. A friend of mine on pbase, Marisa Taddia of Argentina (http://www.pbase.com/mlt ) will often create entirely new images out of old ones in Photoshop. There are no rights or wrongs -- each artist has their own methods and purposes.
Guest 24-Jan-2006 07:12
Incongruity is a concept I used to attract attention on my shots or to express some concept; here is an examplehttp://www.photo4u.it/viewcomment.php?pic_id=56075 the concept was autoirony and this image was made by two shots combined in post processing work.
As can be easily seen, one is in natural position the other is rotated horizontally to place myself with another happy expression in front of me. This shows exactly what I said in my question yesterday: obviously photoshop is useful to enhance the expression of a concept but with a mouse at hand one can not suppress his creativity and sometimes the concepts arise in that moment more than during a photographic catch.
I could also relate this dormant being during shooting by the fact I am distracted by real colors, nature, things, reality....so creativity stay behind and works just for the final and important decision to caputre the scene, an example of unconscious creativity, I could call it :-)
Phil Douglis08-Dec-2005 06:11
Glad you enjoy it, Benjammer. I thought the entire row of torso-less mannequins wearing jeans was quite amusing in its own right, so I simply put two of them into an incongruous conversation with each other by abstracting them with my vantage point and frame.
Guest 08-Dec-2005 02:05
They're flying jeans!
or, Invisible people... Ahh!

Very cool photo.
Phil Douglis20-Nov-2005 02:47
Thanks, Kelly, for your comment. The surprise was my intention. They look so human, we assume they are, until we find out that these pants are worn by mannequins. And that's what makes this image so incongruous.
Guest 20-Nov-2005 02:20
I love the contrast with the colors, really makes it pop out- I also agreed it seemed to take a life of its own, and was surprised to see it was mannequins
Phil Douglis12-Nov-2005 02:16
Thanks, Mikel, for your musings on this odd image. I had a good time taking it. I am glad it made you look twice. The tag is very important because, as you note, the expression on that model's face is critical. I saw her gasping in delight. You saw her as approving the fit. The jeans on the dummies are only half-human, working on a symbolic level. It takes that little photo on the tag to truly add a human dimension to this image.
Guest 12-Nov-2005 02:05
It is a curious image, at a first glimps it seems that they are pants are wared by two people on the street for example but then once you see the image with a bit more detainment you see that they are dummies. Anyway, the incoungruence relies, from my point of view, on the tiket, on first hand for the reason why I thought that they were worn by normal pedestrians, but afterwords I thought... They are worn by a few dummies and perhaps the most significant part of a human body is preciesly the face, so you wold aspect to see a face and a body untop of those pants, but instead the only slightly human reference is the face of the tiket that expresses some human value. On the other hand, and having looked at it for an other time, it looks like the model is looking down on hte pants she just bought looking to see if it fits her fine.
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