Easter Parade
In the distance, bunny-eared balloons drift above the heads of onlookers—ordinary people watching an Easter parade. A woman garbed in a fashionable suit, fur stoles, and velvet gloves strides conspicuously away. She is in a hurry, perhaps late for a lunch with friends, but her physiognomy suggests something else, something darker. Her swinging arm and black, gauntlet-like glove form a triangle with her shoulder bag and hat, the apex of which frames her intimidating sunglasses and superior countenance.
If you read street photographers’ chatrooms today, titles are largely considered passé or pretentious. They often use bad puns or solemn clichés. Worse, they are accused of compensating for what isn’t working in the photograph. Marketing professionals argue otherwise, citing that titles enhance the marketability of artwork. A catchy or memorable title can attract potential buyers and collectors—no small consideration if you want to sell your photographs.
This essay is an experiment where I have taken photographs intended to be exhibited without titles—leaving their meaning up to the audience’s imagination—and have added titles and accompanying made-up anecdotes. This begs the question: Are the photographs enhanced by the narrative? Or are they diminished by turning them into mere illustrations for the anecdote? Or do they, the photographs and the writing, work together as a whole better than the sum of the parts?
The Watchers
In a rough neighborhood, separated by locked steel screens from the fanfare of a passing parade, two men watch the gaiety before them with penitential resignation.
Persephone
From behind a stage curtain, a man peers at a statuesque woman modeling for a women’s dress shop called Wigs and Things. In the foreground, a woman holds a microphone and narrates the show. She completes a triangle with the man and model, setting a metaphorical scene for the Greek myth of Persephone and Hades:
Persephone was the daughter of Zeus, God of the Sky. Her mother, Demeter, was the goddess of fertility of the earth. Hades, God of the Underworld, abducted Persephone to be his wife. Thus, Persephone became Goddess of the Underworld.
Titanic
This ghostly cameo of a cleaning lady resting alone in 1972 in an empty train station in Boston is quietly prophetic. The station, constructed during the era of the legendary ocean liner, was demolished soon after I took the photograph. We are reminded of the wreckage of the doomed ship:
Moving soundlessly through the watery crypt of the Titanic, our tethered submersible camera is drawn to a distant white object. Moving closer, among the encrusted cast iron columns and handrails, an eyeless porcelain doll portends inevitable endings.
Fog
This is a photograph of an empty observation deck on the top floor of a skyscraper during bad weather. The dynamic figure-ground silhouette begs for a metaphorical interpretation:
Fog-bound windows enclose the empty observation deck. Metal viewing tubes become dancers, costumed as musical notes, performing a ballet across a stage in syncopated rhythm. Swagged velvet ropes and chrome stanchions add a sense of gaiety and movement, while the backlit frieze of photographs above them teases us with images beyond the fog.
Walking Scholar
Monumental Ionic columns fill most of the frame, speaking of magisterial power and importance. A man moves out of their shadow, providing an ambiguous but graphic counterpoint. His informal clothes, shoulder bag, trimmed beard, and hurried gait suggest he is not a statesman or magistrate, but a scholar—crossing the porch of the main academic building of a university. His is access to power that comes with knowledge.
Games
In college, I was required to take an art history course in a dark auditorium where I struggled to stay awake as image after image of paintings flashed on a small screen. Years later, I came across a school playground overlooking the Pacific Ocean in La Jolla and was reminded of the work of 16th-century Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel. He is known for his expansive paintings filled with distant figures at work or play. One was titled “Children’s Games.”
Crack House
A brick wall separates us from a decrepit Italianate house, its macabre porch viscerally repellent. At the center of the photograph stands a uniformed man looking down at me. He is menacing, making eye contact no matter where I move. I cannot look away.
