Reflections
As the Pandemic lingers on, shooting this spring has been unusual to say the least. Like most years, winter afternoons were often spent visiting a handful of conservatories within a short drive from home. Spring break often marks a transition point into a new season of subjects and venues. Pandemic concerns transformed a week of California dreaming into three nights of abbreviated escapism in the Indiana Dunes area. The trip highlighted by a venture on the South Shore line into Chicago with a connection on the Green Line to Garfield Park and its conservatory. That day provided productive closure for conservatory season but the mid March days at a deserted Lake Michigan beach did not provide a spring board into what might come next. But the force behind the disruption did.
The Covid pandemic has emptied the streets in the walk able areas of cities. The bustle is gone and people are sparse. You wouldn’t inherently think of times like these as opportunity for shooting urban photography. Most people think urban … think street … think people. I like doing solo urban photo walks. Though when I do, capturing details of the urban landscape is the purpose and any traditional street images of people are opportunistic. The empty streets provided a unique opportunity.
One day I was shooting in Madison, IN and I composed an interesting image. I was shooting flasks of marbles in the window of an antique shop. I didn’t have a polarizer with me and I was trying to figure out what to do with the glare. The more I repositioned myself trying to minimize glare, the more I realized that the reflection of the glare also held the potential to add depth and framing to the subject I was trying to capture. When I got home and processed the image, I fell in love with it. The layers of dimensionality drew me in the more I looked at it.
As much as we like to imagine we are the first to see something or capture it in a certain way, the reality is that most the time others have done similar things before. It is the same here. After having captured that image, I became sensitized to seeing similar captures in other places. The self portraits of Vivian Maier use reflections in this way and are particularly stunning imagery. A contemporary photographer, Marie Laigneau, has many excellent images using the reflections in a glass window to provide background and context to her subjects.
As I have ventured on city photo walks this spring, reflections have been on my mind as I compose. Aside from Indianapolis, many of my walks have been to cities within a day’s range of me. Some of these cities have fallen from economic grace and only hollow shells remain that belie their former vitality. Windows once filled with goods for sale in a more prosperous time are empty, dirty or now contain faded posters promising of an urban hope reborn, yet never realized. Through these windows found in Dayton, Toledo, Madison (IN), Steubenville (OH) and Hamilton (OH) I have made and a collected a small gallery of images. I hope you find something in viewing them.