"The Delivered Photograph": Cases where a picture does indeed speak with us!
Michael,
These two images are finely done and have an intense concentration of private humanity, each focussed on one individual.
Backstreet
Michael Nagel: A repost: Taken Somewhere in China
Numb
Michael Nagel: Repost: Taken in Germany
Michael,
Allow me to continue! Yes, there are titles, but they ar not over detailed or so specific, but istead lightly "float" below the images, and so dont set interfering boundaries for our minds.
The unique benefit of this kind of art is an open-ended generosity. Here, you, Michael, the artist, do not "box us in" with more description than needed!
There is, after all, already ample posture, presence, context, movement and intensity for us to imagine, on our own, possible motivations, purpose and significance.
The artist has to believe that without further education, we are equipped to appreciate the full richness to the nth of his/her inner mental ideas, exported, this into a two dimensional creation: "The Delivered Photograph". It requires and can stand no editing. It needs no details of how it was conceived or made or even when this came to be created. That is the beauty of the perfect "Arc of Communication" built on trust the artist has in our ability to tune in to what is essentially an exported dream.
This is a case where a "title" would likely as not constrain this freedom we have to explore, consider and allow our minds to drift to these streets and recreate a richer set of circumstances than could be explained.
When the artist leaves gaps, like this, the work speaks less of the craft in making the work, but more of the mind and esthetics behind it. So here are two exceptional examples of an idea from a persons head exported, so that we can grasp the possibilities according to what we bring to his creation.
These pictures both have voices, so they can speak for themselves and what they say, is in part written by you, Michael, the artist, and in part by responses your work evokes.
I hope this description approaches, at least in part, you own thoughts on the subject.
Thanks!
Asher
Leonard Cohen, "There's a crack, a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in!" in "Anthem"