7-how-7
I’m Radioactive!
This stuff is under-appreciated. By ‘this stuff’ I mean pure personal documentary photography. Dude hurts his shoulder, goes to the doctor, gets an x-ray, and because time in-hospital moves with all the speed of plate tectonics, he takes his own photo while waiting.
Is it a momentous event? Not so much. Did he learn anything life-changing? He discovered he didn’t have cancer, which he didn’t think he had when he walked into the hospital–so no, not really. It’s just a slightly out-of-the-ordinary moment in an ordinary week.
When it’s done well–and it’s done well here–personal documentary photographs are both idiosyncratic and universal. We’ve all sat in exam rooms, uncertain and uncomfortable, waiting to be given information that’s completely unhelpful. Even if we haven’t done it ourselves, we’ve seen it so often in the movies and on television that we feel we’ve done it. So when our man photographs himself in that exam room, we’re all in there with him, unconsciously layering his experience with our own. With this photo, we all become a little radioactive.
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
