Elad Lassry: Woman (Camera).
I love this photograph and I kind of like what I’ve seen of Elad Lassry generally, though I sometimes wonder what it’d be without those magic frames, and I wonder also why contemporary art is content to come across so small - but that’s a separate thing.
What’s made this woman leap onto that shelf? My guess is that it’s nothing more urgent than a priceless expression on her son or daughter’s face (I’m convinced this is a portrait of a mother, and if I’m wrong it makes no difference anyway). But there she is, in one of those feats of everyday superness, balancing on a tightrope between domesticity and high adventure. Her concentration is so intense that she hasn’t even noticed what she’s up to - it almost makes me laugh. Of course there’s another photographer here, equally stealthy, though I imagine this photograph was more “found” than composed. Nobody could have foreseen the little rhyme between the extended arm and the neck of the lamp. And the woman - is it an actress? - in the black and white photograph: another photographer and photographee, and another version of feminine glamour, maybe, to contrast with this newer kind. You have to look harder for it, the newer kind, and its attributes have changed (from lofty passivity to something catlike cloaked in frumpy), but it’s there. This picture is one degree and a frame away from the photos all families accumulate and never really look at, but there’s a difference, and I’m glad somebody noticed it.
Elad Lassry: Woman (Camera).
I love this photograph and I kind of like what I’ve seen of Elad Lassry generally, though I sometimes wonder what it’d be without those magic frames, and I wonder also why contemporary art is content to come across so small - but that’s a separate thing.
What’s made this woman leap onto that shelf? My guess is that it’s nothing more urgent than a priceless expression on her son or daughter’s face (I’m convinced this is a portrait of a mother, and if I’m wrong it makes no difference anyway). But there she is, in one of those feats of everyday superness, balancing on a tightrope between domesticity and high adventure. Her concentration is so intense that she hasn’t even noticed what she’s up to - it almost makes me laugh. Of course there’s another photographer here, equally stealthy, though I imagine this photograph was more “found” than composed. Nobody could have foreseen the little rhyme between the extended arm and the neck of the lamp. And the woman - is it an actress? - in the black and white photograph: another photographer and photographee, and another version of feminine glamour, maybe, to contrast with this newer kind. You have to look harder for it, the newer kind, and its attributes have changed (from lofty passivity to something catlike cloaked in frumpy), but it’s there. This picture is one degree and a frame away from the photos all families accumulate and never really look at, but there’s a difference, and I’m glad somebody noticed it.
