Why some photographers love photographing store front mannequins... Myself included.

 

As a professional writer I was prepared to write a blank page draft, then rewrite it sentence-by-sentence, put it aside for a few days, then revise it all. After another month or two of very meticulous word choosing and much grinding about punctuation, fluctuating tenses, and a lot of investigation into critical theory, I would rewrite each sentence several more times time but this time with a thesaurus at hand so I could find the most obscure or antiquated words to replace the less filigreed words and so make comprehension something only the true cognoscenti of readers of the blog would understand. Or even care to struggle through themselves.  Methinks. Apropos of nothing. Tally ho! And in this way I would struggle through months of writing in order to explain a very important concept: That there is something fun and attractive about photographing mannequins, in situ. 

But as I sat with my four dimensional, bifurcated, extruded, titanium keyboard, a cup of herbal tea and a lot of self-conscious ego bolstering I came to the conclusion that a long and windy explanation wasn't really required. Hence, to wit, the withering punctum: 

I like to make photographs of mannequins because in a sense I think I'm working to document the interesting work of artists from another field. As an exercise for me it's revealing to have an immovable model to work with so that I can experiment with subtle or big changes in camera angles, lighting, composition and tone. To move five or six inches in one direction, to create space between two mannequins, or to choose just the right aperture and camera-to-subject distance in order to create a focused image of a closer mannequin and a slightly, but obviously, softer rendering of a mannequin just a few feet further back.

In a well done store display a window designer creates a tableau; a visual story, with the way the "models" are dressed and how they are accessorized. How they are arranged. How they are lit. And if they are not lit then how the light at different times of the day affects all of the other variables. Often, the window tableaus will look even more interesting after dark, when only minimal lighting is used.

Most of the mannequins I photograph are facsimiles of women. Some, like a grouping I photographed in Boston many years ago, are fully featured with detailed eyes, facial features and plastic molded hair styles, and even perfectly included, permanent make up. Many current mannequins are featureless. Some have sunglasses and some do not. But in a certain sense they are a symbol for the power of shopping, the thrill of discovering new fashions (also an art form in most cultures), and also represent a certain aspirational cultural form (thin but feminine, unmoving but still graceful). 

Another thought that just occurred to me is that as a voracious reader since middle school of all kinds of science fiction, and now living in the blossoming field/industry/promise era of robotics, I also see mannequins as symbols of a society rushing headlong toward the accelerating creation of human-like robots. I only hope that Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics come along with the robots themselves. 

And since many of us are creatures who value aesthetics is it any wonder that we'd like at least some of our robots to be classically beautiful?????

It's nice to work with "models" who don't make weird faces and complain about how much weight they've gained or why they "hate" photographs of themselves. And, at least for editorial uses, the mannequins aren't asking for talent fees....yet.

Why did I take these photos? Why are they in black and white?

Traveling is interesting. For the first few days in a city everything looks new and different. Everything seems worth a shutter click or two. After you've walked the city for a few days you start separating the subjects that have become routine from subjects that are resistant to inspiring boredom or nonchalance. 

If I come back to a building again and again it tells me that there is something I'd like to explore visually. In Montreal there are a number of buildings in downtown and in the Old Town that bring me back early in the morning, late at night or whenever the sun is in the process of surrounding puffy, white clouds with jewel-like blue sky. But for me the way I most like to see buildings is in black and white. It's part of the process of distilling down the building into pure design or pure existence. And making images in black and white means that the subjects don't depend on the seduction of colors to make their points.

I love to see buildings with big, classical columns. They seem so permanent and regal. So unlike the glass towers that get thrown up all over my home town. I love that certain buildings in other cities are artfully spotlit at night while our glass covered, stolid cube buildings here mostly sit in darkness. 

And, most of all I like images where majestic buildings are conjoined with humans; pedestrians. Something so different from Texas towns that seem to be populated, in the public spaces, only by cars.

When I was in Montreal the temperatures in the evening and overnight drifted down into the lower 40s (Fahrenheit). I love walking with no fixed agenda. Just a vague chill on my cheeks and the exciting freshness of chilled breath. A camera slung over one shoulder. Stopping to look up at an interesting construction. Pulling the camera up to my eye and trying to figure out just how to expose a photograph that I know can't contain both detail in the deep shadows or detail in bright highlights at the same time. Where is the sweet spot? For me, it's nearly always about maintaining at least a bit of visual detail in the highlights. Letting burning light fixtures slip over into pure white. Letting shadows own the inky blacks. 

Then putting the camera on its strap back over my left shoulder and walking on to see what else there is to see. 

When I look at the more graphic building images; those taken far after sunset I love the combination of tones which I don't ever see during the daylight hours. Then, after a few hours of walking, I head back to the hotel, have a glass of wine in the lobby bar and then head up to bed. 

I take the photos because they both remind me of times before I ever thought to have a camera, but they also remind me of the pleasures of looking intently and with a certain modicum of joy, at buildings from another age. 

The kind of camera is immaterial. It's the process that's most valuable. Not the final result.

Sony fans like to claim the A7 as the first full frame, mirrorless, hybrid camera. Sorry, that honor goes to Leica. They debuted the M240 in 2012. Sony followed with their announcement in the Fall of 2013.

 Leica also patented, and built to proof of concept,  the first autofocus system as far back as the 1960s. Never commercially produced. 

Everyone acts as though Leica is lagging. They're just waiting for everyone else to catch up...