May 27th, 2005
by

Faces in a crowd

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The Picture of the Week is a bit late this week, but I had to fly to California to cel­e­brate my brother finally get­ting his degree! (Go Jefe!).



This was taken dur­ing the University Street Fair last week­end and also for the upcom­ing Group f/5.6 show 48 Hours. It is part of a series I’m still explor­ing — Faces in a Crowd. I am intrigued by the var­ied scenes that appear while walk­ing through a crowd — fleet­ing moments that appear then van­ish in the waves of peo­ple. I haven’t quite fig­ured out what exactly grabs my atten­tion or how to com­mu­ni­cate it visu­ally. They seem to have most effect (to me) as a series, inter­spers­ing pho­tos of scenes with pho­tos that show noth­ing — just like a crowd.

~ End Article and Begin Conversation ~

  • June 9th, 2005
    by syd

    1

    Do the peo­ple in the crowds know you are pho­tograph­ing them? Do you tell them? Does any­one ever resist hav­ing their photo taken by a stranger? Just won­der­ing. I think this is a lovely shot and I love the idea.

  • June 9th, 2005
    by Rob McKaughan

    2

    Thanks for the com­pli­ment, Syd!
    For this Faces in a Crowd series, peo­ple gen­er­ally don’t notice that I’m tak­ing their pic­ture. I think this is partly because I do this in very dense crowds so its easy for me to be unob­tru­sive. Also, peo­ple have this funny behav­ior of inten­tion­ally not notic­ing things in a crowd. Of course this adds to the sit­u­a­tion — when indi­vid­u­als start think­ing of the crowd as a thing and not as peo­ple, they relax a bit and be them­selves.
    All that said, if you look through the other pics in the series, (cur­rently up on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/artisticwhim/sets/435066/), you’ll see that some do notice me as I’m shoot­ing. I kind of like these — there’s a com­plic­ity in them. I think that’s why I like this one: http://www.flickr.com/photos/artisticwhim/16734177/in/set-435066/

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