EYESIGHT

By Adam Goldstein
goldstea@mscd.edu

Shaping up photography

I've always been drawn to imagery.

Before I could talk, I communicated through my stylized stick-figure drawings. As I refined my style, I continued to rely on my googley-eyed cartoon characters to relay my deepest and most personal sentiments, even after I'd gotten the hang of speech.

When I enrolled in my first photography course this summer, I was somewhat leery about switching visual mediums. I was nervous about making the jump from the figurative and stylized to the literal and precise.

Still, I bought a used Pentax and threw myself into the process, snapping shots whenever I thought I spied something "compositional."

This was one of my first solo prints, a moment captured on campus through the vantage of a bicycle wheel. When I developed the photo and I first dipped this piece of photo paper into the developer, the shapes and tones that emerged from the redolent brew held my gaze.

I liked the way certain shapes repeated themselves: the spheres of the wheels, the squares of the windows, the oblong rectangles of the bike seat and the umbrellas. I liked the way that the car's tire was caught within the larger circle of the bikes, I liked the thought that I had pressed the button at exactly the right moment.

I know I'm no Cartier-Bresson, but I was pleased to think that I had captured a "defining moment," however small it may have been.

As I continue to toil under safe lights and over the potent smell of photo chemicals, I'm beginning to realize that photography can be just as subjective, just as figurative and just as free as any cartoon character I could ever imagine.