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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Sixteen: Story-telling street photography > Yawn, Bisbee, Arizona, 2009
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10-APR-2009

Yawn, Bisbee, Arizona, 2009

For me, the essence of street photography rests in human emotions I see expressed before me on the street. For example, at first glance this is just a photo of three people standing in front of building that is mostly made up of dark windows. Yet their interaction (or lack of it) is expressive. The only face we see here is the woman’s – and she is yawning. A man stares at her, his arms at his side, and his back to us. Another man, wearing a backpack, seems to be studying a menu in the window of what appears to be a saloon. They stand here in the morning sunlight within a few feet of each other, yet for the moment, they seem to exist in separate worlds.

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Phil Douglis21-Apr-2009 21:46
And that's exactly what makes street photography so fascinating, Carol. On any given street, many different stories are there for us to isolate and preserve with our cameras. Your guess about who is who and what is what here is just as good as my guess, or anyone else's for that matter. Thanks for wondering.
Carol E Sandgren21-Apr-2009 20:38
Since the place they stand before is a bar, perhaps each of these people have their own reasons for standing there, perhaps waiting for the place to open. I see that there really seems to be nothing connecting them to each other except for their close proximity to each other. They may very well be traveling together, but they do seem to each have their own agendas. I have also noticed that they are all dressed differently, as if they expect different situations to occur later on. Perhaps the guy with the backpack is a tourist, eyeing the menu for a possible restaurant location for his lunch. The woman appears to perhaps have been waiting there the longest as she is leaning on the building and yawning. The third man perhaps has just happened upon the place and wants to strike up a conversation with her. This kind of photography is always fun to guess what the real situation is, although we really will never know. We can then make up our own stories.
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