“I’m not looking for images that are obviously pictures of my own children (taken by their mother).”

I’m glad, that is not what i was suggesting at all, so we are in agreement. My enthusiasm was more of the benefit of access to the subject; basically i was hoping i would see something revealed that only the trust, amount of time, and access a mother could make possible verses something a commissioned photographer could attempt to make possible.

you did say something that made we want to write you again. You see, i don’t think there is a paradox in bringing to the surface the collective archetypes and at the same time bringing to the surface things deeply personal/individual. It’s as simple as understanding the whole will always equal the sum of its parts. But there is a paradox if you decide to invoke our primordial goo using ‘average’ collective messages. The average is the true paradox and in my personal opinion is public-enemy number-one with ‘moving’ communication. Yes, the average is a derivable term to describe any audience, but in actuality it describes no single human in that population, for example how many households really have 2.4 children? If you and your friends all want to go to a different restaurant, and you all compromise to make it fair, how many of you were actually fully pleased? Both of these questions show my disappointment in the concept of the ‘average’ and i think it’s the trap of universal communication having any real teeth.

So to map this to your work Lori, first let’s leave my harsh ‘child-ornament’ comment to the side, let’s stick to the symbols, i feel you have used very traditional ‘average’ symbols that should work; well they don’t ‘not’ work, they fit the average, so they won’t offend, and they won’t cause miscommunication, but I don’t believe they will ever again invoke the power of the core collective; unfortunately those symbols lost their glitter long ago for even for the collective, basically no cognitive effort is now needed to reconcile them to their meaning, Butterflies and Wedding Dresses and Horses in Meadows, etc, are… well, I promised myself I wouldn’t use that word on Burn as it’s lazy, so i’ll go around that term and say they are symbols already exhaustively exploited and therefore have lost their cognitive glow. Evidence of this can be found in Deviant Art’s archives.

So what’s the alternative? i only have a theory, but it maps back to the value of ‘just being yourself’, but do so to the point of feeling you are actually being eccentric. Ballen was mentioned already and i think most people would think this guy is off his rocker (I love him), but, has he not just drilled into our collective core and forced us all to reconcile all of our own individuality back to his communication? Most of us are actually invoked by Ballen, mere coincidence? i don’t think so.

anyway, it’s a circular argument so maybe let me try to offer something concrete. You’ve mentioned some things that makes me think you might find it appealing to explore this book if you have not yet already: Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales by Marie-Louise Von Franz. MLvF does a great job in this book of mapping all of the elemental symbols back to the collective and it’s easy to see how hallmark has reinvented so many of them as butterflies and unicorns. For me, if you’re going to explore symbolic messaging verses expressing the collective through the recognisable relationship the children have with the subject they are experiencing (the opposite of ornaments), then starting here and mapping them to your own eccentricities would be a real treat to see.

Again, Best Wishes Lori.

Joe

chris

I appreciate your thoughtful critique. Its interesting for me to consider given what my experience has been shooting and editing this project. One of my favorite things about photographing children, especially my own (who are very comfortable with the camera), is that I can place them in a setting and then only have to watch and wait for a gesture or expression that speaks to what I’m after, in this case, my project. Often times, it is more than what I had hoped for…and others, something entirely different. When editing, I look for an image that expresses vulnerability, fear, sensuality, memory, innocence, sacredness, time, sadness…all of which are part of my Safekeeping concept. I always hope that my final edit will hold images that are accessible to the viewer. I’m not looking for images that are obviously pictures of my own children (taken by their mother). I want the image to rise above that of a portrait. Perhaps this translates (for you) into an impersonal feel. But to be clear, I rarely posed a child while shooting this project. I placed them in a space and let them go. Whatever happened organically, was always better than what I could have conjured up.
I will seriously consider your critique. How does one make an image that is archetypal, accessible, metaphorical and it NOT be impersonal?

there are a couple of things that make me curious about work like yours. First is the duality of the child as a human and also as a concept for all things becoming, all things possible, all things that are at first entirely innocent. The second natural curiosity to me is the maternal spirit, Since i’m a boy, i can only ponder it, i’ve seen it erupt in my partner in such a way that i felt i was meeting a new person for the first time after our son was born and although it felt like the roar of a steam train; it was also quite a beautiful force, for me it makes me understand better what it means to be a lioness with a cub.

so seeing your opening image and reading your introduction i felt i was in store for a dose of child-life and some mystical maternal spirit. i have to mention these things because this is the lens i first see things through when introduced to an effort the way you introduced your work.

without a doubt you have a very consistent, definite command of the media Lori; that hits me first. Then there is what i feel like i’m feeling from what your essay shows me, or a little bit of the lack of what i’m feeling from it. Both from your introduction and my own mentioned curiosities, i thought you would show some enchanted story of child-life or more so, ‘mood’ through the eyes of a lioness, but i felt more that i was shown just enchanting compositions through the eyes of a creative artist.

maybe the hassy’s slow focus prevented more sudden framing decisions or maybe what i say next is exactly what you were going for, but for me the human in the image seems ‘almost’ always to be more of an ornament inside the frame lines than a child. In almost each of the images it seems like you had the child hold a position or a pose that was held for at least a second too long.

i’ve gone back again and again through the essay; which is why i’ve taken so long to reply, looking more for the deliberate feel of a lioness and her cubs, but i didn’t really feel that either, the shots seem too cute, they seem more like models for hallmark cards, images that could be PC for everyone verses a surrender of something personal from your own personal experience.

The last couple of times i forced myself to forget about your introduction and i also viewed everything of yours that i could find and also read your blog, basically keeping my mind as open as i could and let the information just wash over me. Without a doubt, i do feel beautiful, moody and well composed photographs, far from the realm of family photos, but also far from sensing what you were trying to say with your edit as i don’t see so much what you suggest and I don’t see something all that personal.

i can only balance what i say from the fact that i see so much more of what you suggest in almost each and every one of the images in your Soul gallery. i think the images in your Soul gallery say all of those things you mention above albeit with varied actors, but also do so with drifty, whimsical, ambiguous questions marks that i think are a powerful force in this subject and an altogether powerful force for photographs in general. i guess the simple feeling i get from these images above are that they are ‘pretty’ statements with crisp periods at the end, and i have to wonder what they might feel like if the same compositions were delivered feeling less posed, less contrived, and ending more often with an ambiguous question mark.

Best wishes, i would surely pay your fee for my son to be photographed by you, i’m certain it would someday be a family heirloom.

-Joe

I come from digital background in photography, I learnt photography using a digital camera, and have only shot digital so far in my short life. So I was wondering what inspires you to shoot on negative film as opposed to a digital file. Are you someone who has recently made that transition back to analogue from digital, or alternatively have you been a purely ‘film person’ all your life? Or, do you mix and match when convenient?

I realise that these questions maybe seem second place compared to the content, but I’m interested in your photographic background and its subsequent influence on the technical side of this current project (I have previously commented on the astounding content/creativeness of your photographs). So, what drove you to have the information recorded on film?

Thankyou,
Johan