photo books

I browsed through a bunch of books at the library that had really cool and interesting photos. I looked through one book called “girl culture” that was so shocking and very interesting. But, I ended up spending a lot of time with this photography book called “the fat baby” by Eugene Richards. He takes black and white documentary photographs. One that particularly caught my eye was this photo that took up two pages. It is a rear view mirror of a car with a long straight road in it that seems to g o on forever, no cars on it except for one in the very far distance. What struck me though, after initially looking in the rear view mirror, is if you glance above the mirror there is a graveyard. This picture really struck me because I feel like it is conveying the imminence of death after a long life journey- the road. I don’t necessarily think it is a bad, or morbid thing either, it is just a fact in photographic form. I like the use of the rear view mirror in the photo too, it was a very cool use of framing and made you really think about the photo. In the same chapter in the book, there are tons of photos of the elderly. For some reason they really fascinate me. Maybe fascinate is the wrong word- I guess I’m really interested in the life stories of people, especially the elderly because they’ve been through so much. My grandmother is in a nursing home and I find myself looking around at many of the people in there and trying to imagine them at age 20, 30, 40... what were they like then compared to what their life is like now… stuck in a bed all day. So I guess that’s why I chose the next photo as one that interests me. It’s a photograph of an old man in a bed (I’m guessing a nursing home bed from the looks of the room) and he is turned on his side sleeping. He is sort of blurring in the background, while closer up is another elderly man staring at the man in bed, with his hand on his face. He looks upset, pensive. I like this because it sparks up that same train of thought that I get when I go to visit my grandmother- what were these men’s lives like…. Do they know eachother? I also like the framing of the photograph, how the man in bed is in the background, off to the side… sort of like you would almost not even notice him if you looked quickly enough.
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