Ways of Seeing

I went to a photo exhibition of images by a woman named Gundala Schulze Eldowy. I learned that she’s rather famous among photographers (but I don’t think that’s like Brad Pitt famous; I think you can live your life without paparazzi if you’re a famous, say, photographer, or poet).

The show was disturbing in many ways, and quite sad. It required me not to look too closely at all of the photos or it would have been hurtful. I can’t imagine how she managed to work on some of the images; they were enlarged and certainly required her to fuss over colors and framing and whatnot, but the images were of sometimes of dead things (cows, babies), sometimes of sad things (her friend who had both legs amputated and was then put in an insane asylum; you know, anti-joyful things).

I was intrigued, though, by the photo at the entrance. The first photo is of her friend and the woman’s healed, mostly amputated legs, but I honestly didn’t notice that at first. I looked into the woman’s eyes, saw her strong face and arms, a jaw that had been clenched with pain in the near past. The missing legs were secondary. When I realized that, I wanted to see the rest of the photos because I knew Eldowy was going to do something intriguing.

Afterwards, I realized that I seriously love “art” portrait photography (to distinguish this sort of portrait photography from, like, weddings or whatever). I think it’s my second favorite subject, after landscape photography. While I take a lot of landscape pictures of where I live and of what I’m doing, my favorite landscape photos are more about shapes and colors and forms. It’s not something I can do myself, but I appreciate it the most when I see it.