18-MAY-2014
Emotions, Sucre Cathedral, Sucre, Bolivia, 2014
Emotional interaction usually leads to interpretive imagery. Such is the case here. This young couple is obviously moved by the religious rituals involved in this mass. The woman seems on the point of tears. She moves as close as she can to the young man, yet averts her eyes. The man seems lost in his own emotional response. He bows his head, supporting it with his hand. He is wearing powerfully decorative athletic clothing, its colors competing with the quiet emotion of the moment. As such, I converted this image to black and white, abstracting the scene to stress its powerful feelings rather than the bold design of the clothing.
18-MAY-2014
Restless, Sucre Cathedral, Sucre, Bolivia, 2014
I found this child incongruously nestled among an array of praying legs and feet in the last row of the cathedral during a Sunday mass. The four worshippers surrounding her on bended knees are most likely members of her extended family. She takes comfort in their presence, yet turns away at this moment to look at her surroundings. She does not disturb anyone as she sits quietly, her hands pressed together at her knees. The meaning of the moment eludes her – she is a child, and most children of her age naturally become restless after spending more than a half hour sitting in one place. I take advantage of this situation to interpret the scene, abstracting most of it through close framing. In doing so I tell the story of a child who deals with her restlessness in her own rather polite way. Meanwhile, the pairs of bent legs and black shoes arrayed on either side pay her no heed. Her own knees, clad in shocking pink and facing the opposite way, as well as the innocent expression on her face, tell the story here.
15-MAY-2014
After the mass, Sucre Cathedral, Sucre, Bolivia, 2014
A house of worship can be used communally to express religious faith en masse. It also offers individuals a sanctuary for prayer or simply a place, surrounded by history and art, to sit quietly and think or meditate. For more than 400 years, this particular cathedral has been used in both ways. In this interpretive image, a woman sits alone in the cathedral, caught in the grasp of the sunrays pouring in through an unseen window directly above her. She represents a community of one. There are no choirs or priests or worshippers present. A work of religious art is bathed in the golden rays of light as well. Yet the woman looks straight ahead. She is absorbing the nature of the place itself, and is left to her own thoughts. Some may interpret the streaming rays of the sun as a spiritual or divine symbol. (Some photographers even refer to them as “God’s Rays.”) My interpretation, however, is quite different. To me, the streaming rays of light represent the presence of nature, while the cathedral and its religious art is the creative work of man. I see this person sitting in the presence of that art, and within those rays. She is free to interpret, use, and enjoy her surroundings as she wishes.
17-MAY-2014
Rhythms of the street, Sucre, Bolivia, 2014
Both the figures on the sidewalk and the cars on this street become smaller as they recede into the distance. They move apace, rhythmically repeating each other as they climb the hill leading towards the Merced Church’s landmark bell tower. Even the three bells diminish in size as we view them within their arched belfries. A figure riding a motorcycle, stopped in time as it weaves through traffic and roars up the hill, offers a touch of incongruity by linking the cars with the pedestrians – it combines characteristics of both. As a final interpretive touch, I converted the image from color to a vintage sepia, aging the scene and making it seem timeless.
22-MAY-2014
Fighting city hall, Sucre, Bolivia, 2014
During our three weeks in Bolivia, we saw numerous protest demonstrations. Rural residents blocked highways and backed up traffic. Parents marched, demanding better schools for their children. And here, local officials are confronted by a crowd of local media on the very steps of city hall. Protestors bear signs saying “Freedom does not support intransigence,” pleading with those in power to come to some kind of an agreement. This image presents an interpretation of the scene by offering a view of several conflicting activities taking place at one time. In the lower right hand corner of the image, a reporter interviews a local politician. In the very center of the image, another politician (wearing a brown suit) nervously scans the crowd. In a few minutes, he will work his way to the front to speak to the crowd. Meanwhile, the current speaker stands in the entrance to city hall, obscured by posters and outstretched arms holding cameras.
22-MAY-2014
Zebra at work, Sucre, Bolivia, 2014
Many Bolivian cities now use people incongruously dressed as zebras to help pedestrians get across busy streets. The costumed zebras easily catch the attention of motorists with their exaggerated gestures, and capture the imagination of pedestrians as well. Zebra stripes even match the striped patterns of crosswalks. I caught this zebra signaling a pair of waiting, and matching, white cars to proceed on their journey. The dual grilles of the cars even show up as black stripes, mimicking the stripes of the zebra and crosswalk. These matching colors and patterns bring coherence to the image and helps makes it interpretive.
19-MAY-2014
City sweepers, Sucre, Bolivia, 2014
Residents of Sucre take great pride in the cleanliness of their historic city. Everywhere I photographed, there were city employees working in crews such as these to remove litter and debris, as well as tidying exposed earth, as they do in this image. I make this photograph interpretive by exposing with my spot-metering mode on the bright background, abstracting the crew working in the shadows and making them appear almost as costumed actors in a theatrical setting. Two of them wait their turn at right as their partners work here. I retain a trace of their distinctive red city uniforms in the shadows, binding them together into one cohesive unit.
09-MAY-2014
Rock pile duty, Sucre, Bolivia, 2014
I found this red-clad city worker filling a wheelbarrow with rocks, over and over again. It is repetitive hard labor. I express this interpretively by moving my camera position to the other side of the rock pile, filling the entire lower half of the frame with an undulating flow of rocks. By contrasting her small figure to the vast amount of rock, I imply just how much hard work may still remain. Her bright red uniform contrasts sharply to the dull gray-brown rocks, calling our attention to her labors. The woman carrying a green plastic bag walks through the background brings a different level of effort and another kind of task to the image. She never looked at the woman shoveling rocks as she passes her.
21-MAY-2014
Maintenance, Sucre, Bolivia, 2014
Sucre is an architectural jewel, featuring splendid mansions, churches, monasteries and homes dating back as far as the 1600s. Its historic center, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is currently protected by strict city building codes. Most of it is preserved as it looked a century ago. Every building within the historic district must be whitewashed once a year, maintaining its reputation as the “White City of the Americas.” A gaping hole in one of those whitewashed walls offers us this view of Sucre’s mandatory maintenance at work. My interpretation makes the worker laboring within the hole almost a part of it. His curved shoulders echo the curving lines in the whitewashed walls surrounding the hole. He stands precariously upon a plank and sawhorse, no doubt the same kind of equipment originally used to construct this building well over 100 years ago. I render the image in vintage black and white, suggesting that the labors of the past continue to repeat themselves in the present.
19-MAY-2014
Truck driver, Sucre, Bolivia, 2014
The bold design of this red and black truck echoes the design and color of the clothing of its driver. I watched him park the truck and swiftly enter this building. I sensed he would emerge shortly, and when he did, I made this interpretive image of the man and his machine, linked as partners through design, color, and the structure of the image itself. The shadow of the truck connects the driver with his truck by embracing them both. A row of white tiles on either side of the doorway also connects the building to the truck. The contrast in scale between the size of the driver and his massive truck adds a powerful interpretive touch to the image as well.
19-MAY-2014
Little shop of wonders, Sucre, Bolivia, 2014
I made this image along an industrial street featuring small shops specializing in repairing and servicing cars and trucks. This shop attracts its customers with hand made signage. It is roofed with rusting segments of tin and broken tiles, bearing traces of exterior painting long forgotten. This shop sells, or perhaps formerly sold, lubricants. I call this image the “little shop of wonders” because it makes us wonder about everything we see here. It engages the imagination, and thereby becomes interpretive. An indigenous woman plods past the shop, a heavy walking stick and two dogs preceding her. An ornate metal grill, symbolizing a rising sun, guards a window holding empty bags and cartons. More empty cartons rest upon the vividly colored oil drums blocking the entrance to the building. The place seems to be closed. The handmade sign hanging next to the door is just as baffling – it defies translation. The woman and the dogs kept on walking after I made this picture. She was searching the area for useful scrap. The dogs watched her, every step of the way.
19-MAY-2014
Refreshment stand, Sucre, Bolivia, 2014
Once again, I use the three primary colors, red, yellow, and blue, to draw the eye and stimulate an emotional response to this image. I use both a sense of time and place to make this interpretation an expressive one. The scene itself reminded me of the colorful yet melancholy subjects favored by the painter Edward Hopper. The interplay of light and shadow is expressive. It creates the structure of this image, and allows me to freeze the dog in its tracks as it moves towards the shopkeeper who sits in the shade. I define the dog with the sun, yet its nose is less than an inch away from the cooling shadow that embraces the shopkeeper, and slices through a painted beer advertisement on the building wall. The dog’s profile creates a sense of tension as it moves through the image. The shopkeeper pays no attention to the dog, the shadow play, or the advertisement. At the rear of her shop, a lone window frames a glowing scene of broken tile and a landscape telling us how close this shop is to the edge of town. The shopkeeper patiently and silently waits for a customer, but on this morning she had few takers.