Lorrie McClanahan
Six Women, Five Men
Henri Cartier-Bresson called it the decisive moment. In 1952 he wrote, “To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression.”
Here we have such a moment; a beautifully composed precise fraction of a second that records an event that is significant beyond the superficial. Five men sitting together in an airport, waiting for a plane. Five men who, despite their proximity in age and race and physical space, are almost entirely isolated from each other. They’re locked in the grip of a cultural imperative: heterosexual white guys do not suddenly start chatting with each other. They don’t even look at each other.
“There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture,” Cartier-Bresson said. “Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.” Lorrie McClanahan has terrific intuition.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
