Mexico City 7

Posted on January 28, 2003 in Photos

Artifacts in museums present a special problem for me, which isn’t unlike that I feel when photographing tombstones. I want the pictures to be my own. This is especially hard in museums because the lighting and the setting have been carefully thought out by professional designers. The objects themselves — the paintings or the sculptures — are someone else’s work. I want the photographs to be mine.

I’ve solved this, partly, by attempting to approach them as I would a portrait. I’m hesitant to do portraits — nude or otherwise — simply because to do them as it suits me, I need a model who doesn’t mind being bossed around. The ones who will do so require cash payments. Lynn gets very annoyed if I start tilting her head around, insisting that she not look in the lense, pull her chin down, smile, not smile, not try to strike a fashion pose, etc.

Statues and tombstones don’t move and they don’t argue with you about angles. They’ve done their thing, in a sense. My job becomes one of finding angles and creating new visions. Once I get the picture on the hard disk, I can manipulate it (as I did with the jaguar skull above). This is how I make a portrait of another person’s display my own.

I’m not very good about talking about these things. I see them. I’m sorry.