Shirley has placed my friend and travel companion Tim on one side of a tree and has me emerging from the other. She beautifully abstracts us with backlight, using the leaves of the tree as a counterpoint. I love how she stresses our varying approaches to the camera, too. I am looking down into my flip up viewfinder, while Tim presses his camera to his eye. We are virtually joined here – yet each of us is shooting in different directions.
(That same day, Shirley made another image of us, shooting at the summer palace along with our friend Iris Maybloom, at http://www.pbase.com/wangxh/image/85740513 Shirley not only shot us in silhouette at the summer palace – the year before she made a stunningly incongruous abstraction of another photographer at work there as well. See: http://www.pbase.com/wangxh/image/68230927 )