Intention

It was an 80 degree day in April, and I was at a big antique fair in Avignon. While wandering the endless aisles I came across this sleeping beauty getting his radiation dose, and found it more interesting than any of the furniture, paintings, mirrors, chests, dishes, rugs, and the assorted contents of dealers warehouses from all over Europe.

Although this guy below had an amazing statuette of an All American showgirl/cheerleader type that had me thinking; ‘what I could do with this?’ But, in the end, (which is where he was going) I felt it was too much of a great thing in and of itself – it had all the same characteristics of those 40’s and 50’s pin-ups and magazine illustrations – and it felt that there was little I could do but copy it, and that isn’t my idea of photography. Yes, the camera does copy things, but one’s intention seems to me to be more important than mere duplication.

Invention in the moment, inspiration and surprise, and of course the time factor, has always been a more exciting prospect to me than direct rendering of a thing or place or person.