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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Five: Using the frame to define ideas > Porthole, Cherry Creek Arts Festival, Denver, Colorado, 2007
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06-JUL-2007

Porthole, Cherry Creek Arts Festival, Denver, Colorado, 2007

Sculptor John Whipple has framed the face of this subject in a porthole. I move in on this frame with my own frame. The closer I come to the subject, the more I limit context with my frame, and the more I can activate the imagination of my viewers. Those who actually viewed this work of art at a Denver's Cherry Creek Arts Festival saw it sitting on a table with other Whipple sculptures. But with this image, I can restrict vision by limiting the subject to just Whipple's own frame and nothing more. The result: a shockingly incongruously abstracted frame-in-frame image.

Leica D-Lux 3
1/100s f/4.0 at 6.3mm iso100 hide exif
Full EXIF Info
Date/Time06-Jul-2007 12:55:19
MakeLeica
ModelD-LUX 3
Flash UsedNo
Focal Length6.3 mm
Exposure Time1/100 sec
Aperturef/4
ISO Equivalent100
Exposure Bias-0.33
White Balance
Metering Modemulti spot (3)
JPEG Quality
Exposure Programprogram (2)
Focus Distance

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Phil Douglis24-Oct-2007 06:06
Thanks, Marcia -- it does not surprise me that you find this image of value. It is surreal, as is much of your own work.
Marcia Manzello24-Oct-2007 03:23
Outstanding! BRAVO...V
Phil Douglis14-Jul-2007 06:02
Thanks, Ceci, for seeing this image as a symbolic immersion fantasy. Could it be that this work of sculpture represents the experience in the womb? And the figure looking out of that porthole (the portal of life itself) is actually all of us, just before the moment of birth? I am delighted that this image is provoking so many thoughts and ideas. That is what I intended it to do.
Guest 14-Jul-2007 03:37
To me this looks like the face of a recent drowning victim, deep beneath the ocean, caught at a porthole from which there was no escape and preserved in this pale, blue-greenish light that comes from the effect of lots of water above. This fictional person has a sadness and a kind of resignation that are very powerful and which feed this image of asphyxiation, and the resulting eternal, bobbing dance behind the glass until slowly the elements transform matter into nearly invisible particles in the salt sea. The rusted facade and the bolts contribute to this immersion fantasy as well. An incredibly provocative picture, Phil!
Phil Douglis13-Jul-2007 22:32
Glad to have you back, Kal. Thanks for your comment. Yes, this is a disturbing piece of art, and I wanted my image of it to intensify that feeling. As Celia notes, it evokes the world of a prisoner in its own house.I did all I could to stress a sense of confinement, fear, and a touch of curiosity. My closeup vantage point intensifies the both color and texture as well and if that makes it seem more painterly, I've accomplished my goal.
Kal Khogali13-Jul-2007 20:29
It's disturbing that is a fact! You have taken it so far here that it almost feels painterly with those soft textured hues. A very eye grabbing image. K
Phil Douglis12-Jul-2007 21:42
I had inadvertently also posted this image in another gallery in addition to this one. I have moved the comments from that posting and copied them below, and have deleted the duplication.

Response from Phil Douglis, 12-July-2007:

Thanks, Tim -- as photographers, we are always seeing the world through a lens, which means through a frame.
The frame determines what is in and what is out. It is our way of making the camera see selectively.

Comment from Tim May, 12-July-2007:

I see this as a subject looking in the lens of a camera trying to understand what is going on in the camera and by extension in the photographer.

Response from Phil Douglis, 11-July-2007:

No escape, indeed. This figure seems imprisoned, and I wanted my image to convey that feeling. It may well be looking through a window to the world here, Jenene -- but I don't think it wants to get out. Ever.

Comment from Jenene Waters, 11-July-2007:

At first I saw an image of a face in a diving mask. Upon further inspection, it's a face looking through a window to the world - very up close and personal. There is no escape from reality here.
Jenene
Phil Douglis12-Jul-2007 17:40
You are right, Tricia -- our own eyes can be considered frames, as well. We see selectively, not randomly. And what we see creates space -- for ourselves. The camera also has a frame, but we must force it to see selectively. And that is the difference between seeing and photographing.
flowsnow12-Jul-2007 08:45
I always fancied looking through those `holes'. I think it gives a person that space for himself.....great art Phil!
Phil Douglis11-Jul-2007 17:33
Thanks, Mo and Tomasz, for your thoughts. This figure could well represent the past looking into the present, and perhaps the future as well.
Phil Douglis11-Jul-2007 17:32
Thanks, YOP for your question. If I cropped those two screws out of the picture, I would have chopped away at the base of my image, as well as removed a key contributor to this sense of confinement. Those screws help seal the person into that space, and make escape less possible. I don't feel they give anything "away" here -- the viewer knows this is a work of art, not reality, from the start. My tight crop is still just as confining, and those screws really help make that point.
Phil Douglis11-Jul-2007 17:26
I can see how this image suggests the furtive world of a prisoner in its own house. I wanted to stress a sense of confinement, fear, and curiosity here as well. That is why I isolated the subject in the frame cropped it as closely as I did, Celia. The artist had his own story to tell, I'm sure -- but I am glad he did not tell it to me. It was much more fun to make up my own story and shoot the image accordingly. It is a joy for me to trigger thoughts in imagination as well with this image. It is important that artists allow room for the imagination of the viewer to work. If we see a work of art in absolute terms, it loses its magic. (In fact, only a few minutes after I made this picture, my wife found a beautiful piece of sculpture in another booth that really spoke to her. She wanted to buy it. The woman manning the booth in the artists absence insisted on telling the whole story behind the sculpture, a story so far afield from what my wife saw in her own imagination that she was completely turned off by it. She could never see that piece of art in the same way again. And so she walked away from that booth without it.)
monique jansen11-Jul-2007 14:02
He/she looks at us like someone from the past, glimpsing at our world
Tomasz Dziubinski - Photography11-Jul-2007 10:10
Excellent capture, fine art, Vote.
YOP11-Jul-2007 09:29
Hi Phil, I like this a lot and keep coming back to it. Just curious -- if you crop the two screws out of the frame, the viewers may have a hard time to tell whether this is part of a drawing or a 3D, err.. , sculpture. Do you deliberately give it away?
Cecilia Lim11-Jul-2007 09:20
There must have been so much going on around this sculpture, such as other art pieces, the building background and people walking around, but by eliminating everything in the environment except for the porthole, you've focused our attention only on the emotion of this lone figure behind the holed barrier. Also, by not giving us too many details, you force us to fill in the gaps of her/his story with our imaginations. And for me, the worn and aged texture of this sculpture seem to set a platform for a time long gone - The story that you've triggered here in my mind is the one about Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl who was forced to hide in secret rooms for two years during the Nazi occupation in the Netherlands during WWII. When I look at your image, I see Anne's face peeping out secretly from her hide-out with trepidation and with equal curiosity about the world she was forced to abandon for two long years. And your tight crop leaves us little room to breathe, further creating the feeling of imprisonment and oppression that she must have felt. The original artist may have created his own story with his art, but you've used his art to create your own piece of art and expression. And I've used your art to create my own story. Just looking at this process of interpretation makes me really appreciate how art is created, depending on what we bring to it and how we choose to see it.
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