John Raphel – Chelle (2016)

I’ve been unofficial on Tumblr for like eight (8) years give or take. I’ve run this blog for 5+ years and I am honestly to the point where I spend about three times as long waiting for the next page of my dashboard to load than I do scrolling down each page. (The handful of images I like every day hardly even slow me down–it’s like toggle the heart and keep scrolling.)

But I stopped dead when this slid into view.

I read it left to right; eyes scanning until they reach her face and then in a reverse crescent downward–mirroring the curve of the center line of Chelle’s body.

The bit of her her right leg you can see in the lower left-hand corner is like a dead end that then returns your eye back up the same trajectory it descended.

On the return trip: you notice the black scarf around her neck and how her skin is a bit shiny–as if it’s warm and she’s just starting to sweat. (Also note: the color in her face compared to the pale of her skin. This is further emphasized by the scarf as dark dividing line.)

It’s a fine line but one could argue (and I would be such a one to argue) that her  sternum, clavicles and shoulders are all edging towards overexposure.

Objectively great skin tone is probably somewhere halfway between her upper body and face. Yet, what I like about this is that with the shallow depth of field (which one notices as one follows the reverse trajectory of the the initial scanning arc), the contrast between her flesh and the background points even more attention towards the handling of color.

But although I wouldn’t call this good skin tone–it’s actually better than great because it shows me something in a way I’ve never seen it before. And the overall effect here is that light and color are being employed by a photographer to accomplish something more sculptural than photographic. (If you’ve ever spent any time digging through images of Michelangelo or Bernini, you’ll understand what I mean.)

There’s one other sort of meta thing I walked away from this image finally grasping. I’m always flummoxed that anyone bothers with this blog. I mean it’s very much a solipsistic reflection of my ego trying to referee the all-out, 24/7 melee between my id and superego.

But it occurs to me that the reason that people might respond to it is because underneath all that this is very much a personal act of resistance against unmindful consumption. (Frequently writing these posts is like pulling teeth–because my natural inclination is to take in and take in and take in, without every really stopping to dwell on what I’m taking in and how I feel about it. What it’s trying to show me and what it’s trying to show me are telling me.)

Perhaps, I’m giving myself too much credit. But I do think it’s important to resist unchecked, uncritical and unmindful consumption. If this blog manages that for even a handful of you, then it’s an unqualified success in my eyes.