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Front Street Teens

Photography: what it can reveal

One of things I find really interesting about photography is that it can reveal things that have been hidden, or might not appear right away on the surface.   For example, photographs of abandoned places not only show the instant that the photo was taken, but also can tell something about the past.   A photo of a person might look like one thing when you glance at it, but if you study it, you see more happening.   Sometimes, photographs are discovered long after they have been taken, bringing not only the past into the present, but also some context to history.

For example, we have a book in the library titled Pictures from a Drawer: prison and the art of portraiture by Bruce Jackson (779.2 JAC).  In November of 1975, the author acquired a collection of old ID photos from a state prison farm in Arkansas, and published them for the first time in this book.  Looking at these photos, you see the images as they are, unconnected to any kind of narrative or description, and bringing some of the past into the light.

Another example is one of my favorites, Asylum : inside the closed world of state mental hospitals – photographs by Christopher Payne ; with an essay by Oliver Sacks (362.21 SAC).   “ From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth, over 250 institutions for the insane were built throughout the United States; by 1948, they housed more than a half million patients. . . Architect and photographer Christopher Payne spent six years documenting the decay of state mental hospitals like these, visiting seventy institutions in thirty states.” (courtesy of Goodreads)   These photos document not only the exteriors of the buildings, but also the interiors.   I find them to be fascinating and haunting at the same time, and it’s an interesting way to look at history, as well.

 

“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.”
- Dorothea Lange

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