Today, on the subway, there was this girl, or maybe a woman, who sat down in front of
me. She pulled out a big envelope and pulled a number of papers out of it.
They looked like some sort of colorized engravings, which immediately drew my
attention to them. There were some constructions, looked like bridges or cathedrals
etc.
I couldn't help but ask her what they were. She handed me one of them and I turned it
right. There was a big square and a big cathedral. The colors were subdued, not only
because it obviously was a rainy or very overcast day, but also because of the
technique.
Before looking at them I had already asked her if she had hand colorized them, but she
said no and I immediately recognised them as simply photocopies.
She also handed me a print that she had used for the copy I was looking at. Yes, an
ordinary photograph, technically ok regarding colors and sharpness etc.
She said she simply wanted to have them enlarged and put on her wall. I had to get off
at the next stop so I didn't have time to ask her further, but I got the impression
that she actually thought of these copies as "enlargements" in general, good enough
for her purposes and really didn't think about it in the terms that we usually do -
good quality enlargements, true to the neg etc.
Well, the funny thing was that I thought that these simple copies were so much nicer
pictures than were the original photographs. They really looked great, not as
photographs, but simply as pictures.
I don't really know what to make of this, other than it got me thinking about how we
mostly discuss our photography from technical standpoints, where we often routinely
tend to define a "good photo" as at least as sharp as possible, true colours etc.
These pictures were good by the lack of typical photographic qualities...
Maybe they weren't photographs at all, even. Were they?
Hm.
That's all. :)
Lasse
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