Street Scenes, Part One; Paris, 2017
Paris offers a rich range of diverse images, from people to architecture. These images sample its humanity. The scope and substance of Paris street life can't be fully rationalized. Better simply to enjoy, without being too focused on understanding exactly what is happening. But it is fun to speculate, and that speculation is finally what makes for street photography. That the image may be completely precise and unambiguous doesn't mean that we understand precisely or completely what is happening, what is being thought or communicated, what is about to happen next. Street photographs raise questions. There are rarely answers.
The shell game, upper left, is a Paris constant. Tourists are the sheep, waiting to be shorn. A few years ago, an operator by the Eiffel Tower became very excited when I took a series of photographs of him. The shell game is analogous to photography: you think you know what is happening before your eyes. You are usually wrong.
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After a lifetime of mainly expressing myself with words, my postings here will mainly rely on images. They will speak for themselves to some extent, but I'll usually add a few comments of explanation. I've taken photographs for decades, since the 1950's, inspired in part by my father's photographic skill. Four years of photo assignments and quality darkroom time eventually gave way to decades of casual and family picture-taking. I re-immersed myself when I left film and turned to digital.