Women I(n) Love
A series in progress, using found images.
The photographs in this collection were originally made as snapshots during a time when, for most people, there was a presumption of privacy in their everyday lives and relationships. This sense of privacy sometimes generated, in snapshots, a particular kind of un-self-consciousness, both playful and vulnerable. These pictures record not only the details of a face, but also the intimate exchange of a feeling, the heart’s content in that moment, the willingness to see and be seen.
In this selection of images, I’m interested in photographs of women, specifically women and girls expressing the pleasure of feeling, of connection. To me these images are remarkable for the ways in which they are luminous with an energy that has not dimmed over the decades that have elapsed since the camera was originally lifted and the shutter clicked.
What is the source of that luminosity? Does it emanate from the photographer who chose the moment and elicited the expression? Does it belong to the subject (subjects), aglow with emotion and individual presence? How much credit should be given to the medium itself for its near magical power to render not just visible factual detail but the invisible emotional truth of a moment as well?
In the end, of course, the questions are moot. For me, this selection of photographs is both intensely personal and compellingly conceptual. But I’m not looking for answers. I’m looking for a feeling, that deep and instinctual joy that tells me this is it, this is a picture of what it’s all about.
