Au Sable Forks, NY ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone
(embiggenable) • iPhone
(embiggenable) • iPhone
I CONTINUE TO STRUGGLE WITH THE IDEA OF making pictures which illustrate life during wartime. I've made the mandatory tp picture as well as the empty street picture. Although, to date, I have resisted making the closed-sign-on-a-business door picture. And, unless I get in a car and drive a couple hundred miles, there are no hospitals with large tent compounds with lines of people waiting to get in so that's not a picturing possibility.
To a very significant extent, my struggle is compounded by the fact that, as is illustrated by the picture of the budding maple tree in this entry, when the wife and I sit in our upstairs porch-nearly every evening-and look out at the view, the world outside of our sanctuary looks the same as it ever was. Which makes it somewhat difficult to grasp the fact that, while our little patch of the planet is springing (a sorta pun) back to life, the reality is that the world at large is experiencing death and disruption.
That written, I believe the reason I am struggling with this is actually rather simple....during my 30+ years as a commercial picture maker, I was considered to be a picture maker who could come with creative picture solutions for clients needs. That was especially so for those magazines who gave me open-ended assignments to illustrate editorial stories, articles and magazine covers. It was left entirely up to me to decide what to do, picture making wise, and I never, not once, failed to deliver*.
So, it is making me a little bit crazy that, if a client were to come to me today and ask me to make a picture (or pictures) that illustrate what life during wartime is like, I might be stumped. Maybe I just gotta think about more.
*FYI, there was one assignment for a magazine cover to illustrate the lead article about gangs. Gangs in the manner of Crips and Bloods. So my teenage son found me an actual gang member-I didn't ask how-and proceeded to make the picture seen here. The art director loved it. The writer loved it. Everybody loved it. Except ... when cover was on the printing press, the magazine editor saw it and pulled the plug. The picture was never published and I believed I was screwed out of yet another Golden Quill Award.
