Wonderful meditation on photography. I think you’ve really gotten at some of the aspects of old photographs, which seem to have a magic about them that modern cellphone photos lack. Perhaps it has a lot to do with the vagaries of older technologies, or the tactile nature of handling a tiny snapshot, the writing on the back, sometimes bleeding through to the image.
And then there’s how almost all photographs from the 19th century are posed, shot in a studio, with the subjects wearing their best clothes, even cowboys and loggers would dress up, giving them a formality and gravity that contrasts strongly with today’s dominant “candid” ethos. Also, those studio portraits really represent the photographer’s point of view, whereas today it’s the subject who is often “acting” for the camera.
Does Smith’s book include any persona poems where the speaker is the photographer, the other half of the dialogue?
Wonderful meditation on photography. I think you’ve really gotten at some of the aspects of old photographs, which seem to have a magic about them that modern cellphone photos lack. Perhaps it has a lot to do with the vagaries of older technologies, or the tactile nature of handling a tiny snapshot, the writing on the back, sometimes bleeding through to the image.
And then there’s how almost all photographs from the 19th century are posed, shot in a studio, with the subjects wearing their best clothes, even cowboys and loggers would dress up, giving them a formality and gravity that contrasts strongly with today’s dominant “candid” ethos. Also, those studio portraits really represent the photographer’s point of view, whereas today it’s the subject who is often “acting” for the camera.
Does Smith’s book include any persona poems where the speaker is the photographer, the other half of the dialogue?