^ An image of Marc the guitar player in dreamy colour whose engrossment in the music is told by his body form, and supplemented by the blurred background, instead of a regular frontal shot of the player.
We looked at some of Tess Roby's photos on Monday. Today, let's look into her images in a more philosophical way. We will focus on how observation enriches photographic works.
Tess's images beam out an other-worldly quality. It is integral to, operating consciously or subconsciously, her way of observing and deciphering a scene. She said in yesterday's post, "One of the most important things... is making sure you know what's in your lens. You need to focus on all the aspects of the photo, not just your subject."
^The shot was taken at Tess's first listen of Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion
When an eye-catching image gives her an urge to photograph, she focuses on the scene as a whole and not just on the primary subject. This logic leads her to do the scene in a way befitting her idea of optimum, whereby the final image is less a reflection of the reality but more a momentary flashback of her appreciation of the scene. In other words, the process of her observation forms a flashback, or an ideological encasement, before the point she hammers out the aesthetics and technical aspects for a scene.
^Street action in Toronto. The walking man, an elderly on walking-wheels, a car turning up around the corner, the wheel-chaired person accumulate to induce a curiosity in the viewers to imagine the post-shutter-released proceeding of these elements and how the photographer had waited for them falling into places in the final image.
Simply put, to Tess, photography is not as much about snapping the decisive moments as about all the elements falling into the critical places. This falling-into-places is the foremost concern in her deciphering a scene on the basis of her observation.
^Marc and music vinyls
The final images become a visual form to represent primarily a narrator's flashback (in which she interprets her version to the viewers) rather than a composer's pieces (for which the listeners have more elbowroom to come to their own conclusions). Look at her photos here again. They are like speaking to you about the happenings in the scenes through her personal perspectives.
It is the strange interaction of seeing through her perspectives and one's own eyes that the viewers feel alienated from the otherwise objective images, resulting in a distinctive other-worldly quality to her photos. This is a style afforded by how she observes and defines photography.
(Photos by courtesy of and copyrighted to Tess Roby)
Comments