samedi 16 octobre 2004

French Café Chairs... It's a photo trick... not blurred eyes Oh yes... Caro is back It's mid-October and the typically cheap, uncomfortable, painted metal chairs of multitudinous tints and hues of burnt earths, lush greens and watery blues that are so French are still littered around outside bars on street corners and in town squares which if not taken over by cars then by crowds of men playing pétanque. But it is getting cold today with snow forecast in the Massif Central, Alpes and Pyrenees this coming weekend so there are few boules being thrown and fewer outdoor drinkers willing to brave the bitter wind even though the sun is shining somehow between the gathering storm clouds. Chairs have always had a fascination for me... I prefered many of their shapes to some of the nudes I studied in life-classes at art college some forty years ago. And so it is with these admittedly mass-reproduced examples... they have the rare elegance of a catwalk model plus the curvaceousness of a voluptuous broad - a combination that often, if not always, captures my eye. Through wine-influenced eyes and mind, however, they remind me of flirtatious waitresses... drifting and spinning in front of my dizzy head and thoughts... are they asking for another order of drinks... or perhaps inviting a secret rendezvous? I made many exposures of this attractive café chair using different lenses, aperture settings and focus points to try differentiating between subject, foreground and background... with largely indifferent results. Then I used my favourite "oddball" technique of bending the optical parameters. I occasionally assemble an unwieldy combination of camera plus Nikon PB-4 tilt-and-shift bellows plus Nikkor 105mm f/4 short-mount lens head... and tilt the front lens board of the bellows to such an extent that there is only a very narrow plane of sharp focus visible in the camera viewfinder. Short-mount lenses have no focusing helical of their own - they rely on the bellows controls for accurate focusing... but as creative hand-held framing and focusing are difficult with a set-up designed for steady tripod use I have to focus somewhat generally and rhythmically move towards and away from the subject whilst rapidly clicking the shutter button. It's a very hit-and-miss process which only works sometimes to produce a satisfying image... as has been momentarily captured here. For me this image captures the autumnal spirit of loneliness, fragility and beauty... it reminds me of an interesting woman turning away from my glances... Speaking of which... I've reloaded my favourite image of Caro. I took it off this site a few days ago for the wrong reason... and then couldn't replace it because the weblog page for that date didn't exist any more. So here she is in company with the so-sexy French café chair ;-) When I came across this print, which I must have made 30 years ago, it still reminded me of a Bill Brandt image... the juxtaposition of her arm and face especially. I keep it although I don't need any keepsake as a reminder of her. Caro is etched on my memory and could have been written into the pages of many an Anaïs Nin story... beautiful, sexual, stylish, exciting, teasing, mysterious, physical, unfaithful... and hopefully somewhere out there, still full of life. 9:17:21 PM    comment []