STREET / NEIGHBORHOOD PHOTOGRAPHY IS LARGELY A STUDY OF CONTRASTING ROLES, of bearing witness to the millions of tasks, large and small, that are our daily assignments. We go here and do this. We always open this, or close that, or wait upon he, she, it, etc., etc, as if we were pre-cast in some larger production. Or as the Beatles famously sang of the pretty nurse, selling poppies from a tray, “though she feels as if she’s in a play, she is anyway….”
For me, there are endless narrative opportunities in just isolating these roles, these tasks, and by looking at them a little closer, elevate them a bit from mere “work” or “this is just what I do.” I try to find people that are lost in repetition, locked into the mechanical rhythm of doing certain things over and over. And just as there is fascination in seeing how the gears and wheels of a massive timepiece mesh together for a common result, there is just as much of a story to be read in just one of those gears….its design, how it is meant to fit into its larger context. What it (or who) was designed to do.
I can’t speak specifically about what caught my eye about this greeter/ticket-taker/stage door manager sitting the check-in desk at a community arts center. He just seemed to perfectly fit where he was placed, and thus was as atmospheric as the surrounding furniture or fixtures. As is the case with many photographs, it was very much a thing of the moment, and what constitutes “a moment” for me might leave you utterly cold. So be it. So be the pictures. It’s a Sunday morning and I am lazily looking back at images of different people doing what they themselves would term “nothing special” and musing over my attempt to see, and show, that they are actually very special indeed.
thenormaleye 
THEY ALSO SERVE WHO ONLY STAND AND WAIT…..
By MICHAEL PERKINS
STREET / NEIGHBORHOOD PHOTOGRAPHY IS LARGELY A STUDY OF CONTRASTING ROLES, of bearing witness to the millions of tasks, large and small, that are our daily assignments. We go here and do this. We always open this, or close that, or wait upon he, she, it, etc., etc, as if we were pre-cast in some larger production. Or as the Beatles famously sang of the pretty nurse, selling poppies from a tray, “though she feels as if she’s in a play, she is anyway….”
For me, there are endless narrative opportunities in just isolating these roles, these tasks, and by looking at them a little closer, elevate them a bit from mere “work” or “this is just what I do.” I try to find people that are lost in repetition, locked into the mechanical rhythm of doing certain things over and over. And just as there is fascination in seeing how the gears and wheels of a massive timepiece mesh together for a common result, there is just as much of a story to be read in just one of those gears….its design, how it is meant to fit into its larger context. What it (or who) was designed to do.
I can’t speak specifically about what caught my eye about this greeter/ticket-taker/stage door manager sitting the check-in desk at a community arts center. He just seemed to perfectly fit where he was placed, and thus was as atmospheric as the surrounding furniture or fixtures. As is the case with many photographs, it was very much a thing of the moment, and what constitutes “a moment” for me might leave you utterly cold. So be it. So be the pictures. It’s a Sunday morning and I am lazily looking back at images of different people doing what they themselves would term “nothing special” and musing over my attempt to see, and show, that they are actually very special indeed.
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