It appears I’m wrestling with a need to over-communicate, to give too much away. One of my final shots from my recent walkabout was to take this picture in a pharmacy.
I’ve begun considering the way in which a space can define a chair, and that chair can then define (albeit briefly) the person in it. This is a reversal in terms of my exploration up to this point, in which the person gave the chair its definition.
Waiting in these chairs could be a mundanity, but it could be a loaded, pregnant pause in the occupant’s day. This chair sees everyone, and each sits upon it for a different reason, but the reasons are rarely good ones.
As an expansion to my original idea, this allows me to photograph less well-guarded, more public spaces. From a logistical perspective, it frees me from some of the costly and sometimes fruitless negotiation for access that I’ve faced up to this point. It also opens up the idea of the chair as a circumstance, mutable and inconsistant, and available to all. A circumstance that is not cast in stone.
Crop
One interesting note from our critique session a few weeks ago, was that I was giving away too much information, that I should leave more for my viewer to discover and to extrapolate upon.
This is perhaps a hangover from my more commercial work, where the inclusion of, for example, the pharmacy signage would be a given, (to aid an instant understanding). In this case there is greater mystery to the photo, and greater prominence to the chair by cropping in.
