First danceby
docjonnyComment by posthumous: 
This photo is a great opportunity to discuss how photography “works” as an art. Each of the fine arts has its own technique, its own modus operandi, and we can gain insight into the different arts by comparing them. The comparison that this photo brings to mind is that painting is “additive” while photography is “subtractive.” The painter is faced by the abyss of the empty canvas, and bravely adds brushstroke after brushstroke of paint, laboriously building up an image. The photographer, on the other hand, stands on the cliff of TMIâ€Â¦ every detail within frame bounces photons through the shutter of his camera: a wealth of detail that threatens to be nothing more than the chaos we see every day of our lives. The photographer’s journey from chaos to art therefore seems subtractive in nature. The challenge becomes how to remove information, to highlight and juxtapose certain elements, in order to do what art does, whatever that is.
In this case, information is obliterated by darkness, while what seems like a beam of light directs our eye to an extremely limited scene. And because photography is “subtractive,” this has an element of wonder to it, whereas if it were a painting or drawing it might seem lazy! And what are these elements? A stone wall, some chairs, and a girl dancingâ€Â¦ or at least, what seems like a girl dancing. You could, in fact, argue that the photograph is dancing, that the dance occurs in our eyes differentiating the blurry spin of girl from the rough stone pattern and rigid row of chairs behind her. This analysis is on a mostly visual level. The title “First Dance” takes us into more literary territory, suggesting a symbolic or allegorical meaning: a spotlight on a new experience, an experience that is more universal than just one girl dancing for the first time. Blur is good for allegory, because it blurs out those details that make us individual.
But none of this really explains why I chose this photograph above many others. This choice is actually mysterious even to me. After all, when you tell your doctor about some pain or dizziness you’re having, the doctor doesn’t ask why you have it. Actually, you expect the doctor to tell you! Nevertheless, I will try to be the quack who heals himself, and guess at the reasons. It could be how solid (like a tightly rolled scroll) the torso of the girl appears even as it is spinning. I love the complexity of contradictions. I like how her head is tilted down in profile, reducing her face to just a couple of tiny strokes and emphasizing the graceful orb of her head, and I like how this downward tilt is in the same direction of the beam of light that is backlighting her. I like the composition, that pushes all the visible elements leftward, echoing the leftward tilt of the beam of light, and that makes the girl small in the picture, which doesn’t make her seem insignificant, but rather emphasizes the experience that she is having, and therefore makes her more significant. All taken together, along with elements I don’t even realize, this image fills me with hope and a sense of life. Even more, it suggests to me the ability to face something dreadful and reimagine it as something wonderful.
Message edited by author 2017-01-26 20:33:37. 
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