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SantiBilly — Streets of Solola
Published: 2009-04-26 02:53:01 +0000 UTC; Views: 1367; Favourites: 31; Downloads: 0
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Description
The streets of Sololá in Sololá Guatemala, near lake Atitlán. Hope you like the picture, everybody was happy this morning, it rained for the first time yesterday since october!Related content
Comments: 23
I am not a professional, and do not intend to write real critiques. But I do love photography and other kinds of artwork, and I love to give comments that are a bit more than just the short 'aww, nice' kind of thing. And I do know from own experience that sharing some thoughts and impressions about an image can be helpful and encouraging for an artist too. So, here we go... :
I think this is a beautiful picture... It tickles my curiosity as to where these women are coming from, and where they are heading too... Strangely the few drops of rain on the wall, and the message in the description that people are happy about the rain, also add to the puzzle... these women don't seem to notice the rain at all... and don't look happy, rather worried...
Pity that the girl behind the first woman is hardly visible - I would have loved to see her too... Yet, I know, as a candid /street photographer, we have to take the moment and situation as it is... waiting a little longer for the girl to come in view, would have the whole little group disappear around the corner e.deviantart.com/emoticons/s/s… " width="15" height="15" alt="
Even without knowing anything about these women, the colours, the wall paintings, the colourful traditional clothing of the women, the mood in this picture... it all invites us to get involved in this image... Beautiful indeed! e.deviantart.com/emoticons/n/n… " width="15" height="15" alt="
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I'm looking at this with the eyes of someone who has never been to Guatemala: two local women walk along a street in a small town. Both are carrying small children, the one up front might even be carrying two, and it looks like a third, larger child is walking behind one of the women, largely invisible. The front woman looks intently ahead of her and carries a little paper in her hand. The other one has her eyes cast down; it's impossible to tell if she's worn down by her entire situation, a medical problem or just tired. Anyway she's happy to let the other, older woman - her mother, her older sister or just a friend? - lead the way.
Their beautiful, locally-inspired dresses look good enough, their sandals aren't glamorous footwear but they're in good shape, they do the job. No big-brand wear for the children either, but they're well protected against the cooler weather after the rain (the artist comment told us that it has rained recently).
It's not easy to guess these women's story. Given the concentration and expression it can't be trivial or routine shopping; it can't be some business with the local council or they would have known the way to town hall; likely it's a visit to the doctor, especially with small children around. If so, either they're people who go to a doctor rarely - for whatever reason - or one of them is suffering from an unusual condition for which someone has advised them to go to another address.
Their appearance is a hint that these are people who are getting by, but only just. The men are absent - at work, dead, loitering at the café or with another woman, it's not possible to tell. A car is probably a priceless luxury for them, they need their slings to carry their kids and their goods. For people 'just getting by' a medical condition that's trivial elsewhere can be a financial disaster or simply fatal, because that kind of money isn't there.
What attracted my personal attention first were the ads on the wall. They're great providers of context. The big brands are there - not as as shiny neon displays, but clumsily hand-painted. In a rich economy, 3M, Yamaha or BIC would pay the shop owner for the right to advertise and they'd make sure that it would look good. Over here, it might well be that the shop owner is using the big names to show his clientele that his business is one to be taken seriously, and so the costs are on him. The array of brands shows that is not a standard drugstore, but more the little shop that has everything: stationery (3M, BIC), Kotex (ladies' sanitary) and cheap musical instruments or toys (Yamaha music, not Yamaha motorcycles, going by the flute).
Moving from the content to the photography itself, this has an apparently casual approach that fits content and context.
The colours seem far away from the 'one colour and a hint of its opposite' rule of thumb, but they're not a multicolour cacophony. In fact, most of the surface is blue in one saturation or another, and the same hue of blue returns on the wall and in the women's and children's clothes. The tension is kept up, not by the yellows and greens left and right, but by the splatters of pink and red in the center of attention. But in whichever way you prefer to interpret them, as a subtle balance or as folkloric abundance, they're related and pleasing.
Although this is not Street photography, it has the Street aesthetics - the abundance of stray elements aren't clutter, they all add to the mood and context. The composition isn't very formal, but it has a rhythm of vertical lines and gently sloping lines, and the repetition of the 'woman carrying child' element. Minor complaint could be that the third person is only visible with her feet, so she becomes a stray element; you can't have it all though.
A question to answer could be why a Street photographer like =lokisb chose to file this picture in the photojournalism gallery. The picture is candid, it has a great human and humane element and it's clearly in a public place. The answer is distance: it's taken with a telelens at 155 mm focus. This shows in the flat perspective and in absence of interaction with the viewer. However, these people are interacting with their context, bringing it to life for us as it were, and that's one of the things that makes this wonderful photojournalism and art.
So, if the photographer asks us if we like this picture, I have to answer with a solid yes. Like a good (photo)journalist, =lokisb has a story to tell.
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thank you, glad you liked it!
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Totally agree with Liz!
Give us a larger full view, you stingy!
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will do, I'm just having the small view for the main page, lol.
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This is the type of photograph I really love to see you post!
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