RE: [Leica] backstage photograph exhibit

["Dan Honemann" <danh@selectsa.com>]

Sounds great, Jesse--I'll be there!  Any LUGgers want to use this occasion
as an opportunity to meet up in Baltimore?  There are some nice cafes in
that area (Mount Vernon sq.).

Dan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> [mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of Jesse
> Hellman
> Sent: Friday, February 16, 2001 8:59 PM
> To: Leica List
> Subject: [Leica] backstage photograph exhibit
>
>
> The Peabody Conservatory of Music Opera Theatre in Baltimore is mounting
> a show of 46 photographs I made over the last five years, taken
> backstage at the opera performances. Any Luggers nearby are welcome to
> attend the opening Friday evening March 2 in the Galleria Piccola of the
> library. All of the photos were done with an M6 and p3200 film. My son
> David, a student at Hampshire College, wrote this review of the
> photographs for the Peabody News:
>
> My father has been taking photographs all my life. Many of my earliest
> memories remain most vivid in the form of an old grainy print. Sometimes
>
> it’s impossible to be sure whether it’s the beauty of a photograph which
>
> triggers an old memory, or if it’s the strength of the memory which
> lends
> the photograph an appeal beyond that of its base aesthetic components.
> The
> photographs in this series ring with genuine spontaneity. They speak
> volumes
> about an instant even as they seem to stretch on and on...
>
>  One of the photographs shows a young man and woman romantically
> entangled
> while a camera flash blazes behind them. The moving shutter of my
> father’s
> camera shielded part of the film from the flash, creating an
> “artificial”
> break between light and dark. Here the themes of the series double over
> upon
> themselves - the tensions between reality and theatricality, between
> reality
> and illusion, between present and past, the dynamic between performer
> and
> observer, and the influence observation has upon human behavior - and
> our
> view of things becomes a bit murkier. This is one of my favorite photos
> in
> the series.
>
> Photography is among the most scientific and precise artistic methods of
>
> visual reproduction. Perhaps that is the source of its peculiar
> melancholy -
> the accuracy of the image underscores the illusion. In this series of
> photographs, my father has managed to seize upon the minutia of human
> expression. In contemplation, play, and transformation, the subjects of
> this
> series are represented with a keen eye for nuance. Their features
> strengthened with theatrical make-up, their bodies frozen in action, the
>
> moment seems so present, even though it is past.
>
> Jesse