Staged Reality

I assume that someone put this bike in the pool for a PR event, but no matter, it’s there as a reality for the day. But at first sight it was a mysterious shocker. I can still feel the visual pleasure of the image as I rounded the corner and saw it.

I take these gifts as they come and don’t discount them just because someone else’s setup collides with reality. It is a reality, even though put there by commercial needs. This reminds me of the time, over 30 years ago, when I made a living shooting advertising campaigns, back in the days when photography as a gallery art form couldn’t support me and my young family. So I did the work necessary to stay alive and keep my own work going.

My speciality then was to make photos for ads that seemed as if they really happened, and I was lucky enough to be there at the right time to make the picture. It was a great game, and many times I used things I actually had seen happen in daily life; small non-events that had a surprise to them. And when they worked I got great pleasure from seeing the event unfold in real time, come to a  peak and fall, and maybe even continue on into real life, when the actors thought that the moment was over, and often it was then that the merging of the staged and the real became believable.