I came across this book in the library and immediately picked it up due to the title. There was something that I felt connected with my own work and I realised that while my work isn't necessarily showing things out of the ordinary at all, both pieces of work focus of things that aren't as they should be or things we don't expect.
His images are taken in a very different style to mine too; he uses a more documentary technique which includes a lot of people who are often on the street.
The image that I am most interested in from this work is simply captioned as '1976, Paris'. It shows a suited man holding hands with some sort of monkey as they walk together down a street. A woman and a baby are crossing their paths and both are looking at the monkey. The man appears content and calm in posture, as if this isn't strange for him at all.
This is indeed out of the ordinary as the title of the book would suggest. This image shows a narrative of some sort much more effortlessly and obviously than my work which happens to be more subtle. We're observing a situation happen rather than staging it. My images also show more of the aftermath; for example it's after the crayon has been broken that I will take a photo of it, not the point of incident which Meyerowitz does.
The cars in the background date the image, just as the technology in mine would do to my images. We know this isn't recent even without the date in the caption because of the cars, then perhaps the clothing too although that's more personal and something some people may still wear today.
They appear to be walking over a bridge of some sort and the sun is heading into golden hour. The light helps create an atmosphere that makes the image feel like a beautiful encounter, which i very different to my own images which are beautiful yes, but in a more stark way.
I find it interesting that the baby is also looking at the monkey with a sort of unimpressed face. They know that this isn't the norm even with just a few months into the world. Upon further thinking it's possible a baby would look at all animals this way but the very fact the monkey and the baby were photographed this almost implies that the baby knows of it's abnormality.
This isn't the best reproduction of this image, however it's clear in what it shows. This is captioned '1978 New York City'. There are two people dressed as shoes in a brick red colour, with only their legs to be seen. A lady on crutches swings her injured foot forwards to almost touch the end of one of the fake shoes. She seems truly happy despite her ailment, and this with the ridiculous shoes gives the image an overall lighthearted mood.
I also believe that due to the lack of context, we find this image even more so entertaining as we have no reasoning as to why this is happening and all we know is that it's strange and it's highly unlikely we've come across anything similar. Without a backstory the shoe-men have no reasoning to be there to us as the viewer.
I can only imagine if such a thing happened today, we'd all have out our smartphones taking photos and uploading it to social media, taking selfies, rather than focusing on another person's interaction as Meyerowitz does here. This is another factor that dates the image past the cars and fashion; our behaviour to strange things has changed because we now have the technology on our hands at all times to document such scenarios that we don't focus on our own interactions with people and living in the moment. Now, we are all the Meyerowitz's in this image, we're all documenting these things.
You would have thought that this would make us more desensitised to such happenings yet we still manage to find humour in them, hence our desire to document and upload it.
The way the two images are taken in different cities, in different countries in different continents show that odd things happen globally. For example, in my time in florida while on a bus I saw a man with a python wrapped around his neck and everybody got out their phones to record it. The circumstances hasn't changed, and this could be linked to the monkey being walked, but perhaps just the way we react has in this documentary style.
My work is less about the change of time, and I don't necessarily think Meyerowitz's work is about that either, only now that we're about 45 years into the future from when these images were taken we now can comment on how times have changed. When the images were taken they were purely to document the strange happenings the photographer documented on the street, with themes that cross over with my work; things as they're not designed to be, that we don't expect and even perhaps that we don't want (for example, '1975 New York City' shows a whole load of smoke in front of people which would hardly be desired by the foot traffic, as shown below)
His work is rather different stylistically, in his approach and techniques and even his subjects, but I can extract inspiration from these images and themes that he uses, and even if they don't end up playing a part in my work I think it's important for me to understand how other photographers go about the same kind of themes as I am experimenting with.
His images are taken in a very different style to mine too; he uses a more documentary technique which includes a lot of people who are often on the street.
The image that I am most interested in from this work is simply captioned as '1976, Paris'. It shows a suited man holding hands with some sort of monkey as they walk together down a street. A woman and a baby are crossing their paths and both are looking at the monkey. The man appears content and calm in posture, as if this isn't strange for him at all.
This is indeed out of the ordinary as the title of the book would suggest. This image shows a narrative of some sort much more effortlessly and obviously than my work which happens to be more subtle. We're observing a situation happen rather than staging it. My images also show more of the aftermath; for example it's after the crayon has been broken that I will take a photo of it, not the point of incident which Meyerowitz does.
The cars in the background date the image, just as the technology in mine would do to my images. We know this isn't recent even without the date in the caption because of the cars, then perhaps the clothing too although that's more personal and something some people may still wear today.
They appear to be walking over a bridge of some sort and the sun is heading into golden hour. The light helps create an atmosphere that makes the image feel like a beautiful encounter, which i very different to my own images which are beautiful yes, but in a more stark way.
I find it interesting that the baby is also looking at the monkey with a sort of unimpressed face. They know that this isn't the norm even with just a few months into the world. Upon further thinking it's possible a baby would look at all animals this way but the very fact the monkey and the baby were photographed this almost implies that the baby knows of it's abnormality.
This isn't the best reproduction of this image, however it's clear in what it shows. This is captioned '1978 New York City'. There are two people dressed as shoes in a brick red colour, with only their legs to be seen. A lady on crutches swings her injured foot forwards to almost touch the end of one of the fake shoes. She seems truly happy despite her ailment, and this with the ridiculous shoes gives the image an overall lighthearted mood.
I also believe that due to the lack of context, we find this image even more so entertaining as we have no reasoning as to why this is happening and all we know is that it's strange and it's highly unlikely we've come across anything similar. Without a backstory the shoe-men have no reasoning to be there to us as the viewer.
I can only imagine if such a thing happened today, we'd all have out our smartphones taking photos and uploading it to social media, taking selfies, rather than focusing on another person's interaction as Meyerowitz does here. This is another factor that dates the image past the cars and fashion; our behaviour to strange things has changed because we now have the technology on our hands at all times to document such scenarios that we don't focus on our own interactions with people and living in the moment. Now, we are all the Meyerowitz's in this image, we're all documenting these things.
You would have thought that this would make us more desensitised to such happenings yet we still manage to find humour in them, hence our desire to document and upload it.
The way the two images are taken in different cities, in different countries in different continents show that odd things happen globally. For example, in my time in florida while on a bus I saw a man with a python wrapped around his neck and everybody got out their phones to record it. The circumstances hasn't changed, and this could be linked to the monkey being walked, but perhaps just the way we react has in this documentary style.
My work is less about the change of time, and I don't necessarily think Meyerowitz's work is about that either, only now that we're about 45 years into the future from when these images were taken we now can comment on how times have changed. When the images were taken they were purely to document the strange happenings the photographer documented on the street, with themes that cross over with my work; things as they're not designed to be, that we don't expect and even perhaps that we don't want (for example, '1975 New York City' shows a whole load of smoke in front of people which would hardly be desired by the foot traffic, as shown below)
His work is rather different stylistically, in his approach and techniques and even his subjects, but I can extract inspiration from these images and themes that he uses, and even if they don't end up playing a part in my work I think it's important for me to understand how other photographers go about the same kind of themes as I am experimenting with.
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