Praising a Photographer of Detroit Social Life

Dear SB, Photographer,

I enjoyed a half-hour paging through your photos from a Santarchy bar hop, I think for this year. It looks like a good time was had by all. I found myself musing on the aesthetic that underlies your photography. First, you are always in the middle of an event. It could be an InZero film shoot or it could be a night of nightclubbing at the Bleu Room, but it is very rare when the viewer cannot draw a straight line from the picture to the event. In other words, you are rarely taking a picture of a person posing or a flower being a flower. The person is caught in action in the middle of a game, and the game is called by the event in which they have chosen to involve themself. And you, as the photographer, are a member in the game, a member who happens to have a camera around his neck and a camera bag in tow. That's probably why I have the illusion of having attended the event after viewing all the series of pictures or after viewing only a small number.

To this I add my experience of seeing you photograph. You are frequently dancing with your subjects, moving into position with your arms, camera and body and only still as long as the camera needs to capture the image. I say as long as but it really is as short as the camera needs to capture the image. It is brief when you strike your pose, allowing the camera to autofocus and illuminate and shutter open and close. Your body is never merely a human tripod (or bipod) for keeping the camera in the right place. The camera is a component of a complicated, impromptu dance.

To this I add that your subjects always look as if they are greeting or responding to a friend. I have watched as you informally wait for a sign that says you are welcome to take a picture. I have watched as you have huddled with the subject so that they can see, in the viewfinder, what the camera has capture. Although I have never seen you do it, I believe that you would erase any image that they found offensive. Thus, the picture of a woman dancing in shorts and pasties before a brick wall I know are images to which she had consented after the performance. Thus, your characters are given depth greater than that allowed to the flat film medium. I can imagine the characters interacting with you in an imaginary before image and I can imagine them interacting with you in an imaginary after image. This fact will advise critics in days to come how to experience your work.

It would be peculiar not to see your photos in an event series. You make a point of taking a picture at random intervals, but these are not long intervals. Your pictures increase in frequency when you take multiple images of the same subjects, and I believe this frequency is increased because permission and engagement is negotiated before the first image. If cases when you move from subject to subject, the longer interval is a function of the time it takes to negotiate permission to take beforehand and then permission to keep afterhand. Any curator who staged a show of your work will have to consider that your images were taken in a series and displayed on smugmug in a series. However, a curator will be attempting to show a representation of your work over the course of multiple years, and this might require him to show many photographs out of context.

Before I close, it is important to address how you select subjects for your images. Membership in the event is much more important than any list of physical characteristics possessed by the subjects. In other words, we are invited to look at all the women at the event, not just the ones selected for being photogenic by cultural criteria. We are invited to engage all the women as beautiful, made so by the selection of the photographer and by the power of events to include.

Wilbo Wants to Be Left Alone by the Paparazzi; And He Is!