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A Gin Shop
It’s pretty simple, really. The camera is just a device that records whatever is in front of the lens. It records it with precision, detached, unemotional, impassive, deadpan. The job of a photographer — the art of photography — is to decide what to fit into the frame and what to leave out.
There’s so much to love about what’s fitted into the frame of this photograph. The many ways it suggests depth. The hints of social commentary, with the Porsche peeking in at the left and the wildly artificial green of the astroturf on the right — not to mention the obvious fact that this is a gin shop, the intersection of capitalism and iniquity. The three young millennial men barely visible inside, gathered like Macbeth’s witches, offering prophecy. All those straight Protestant lines and geometric forms. And lawdy, that glorious pagan color.
It’s pretty simple, really. It’s just a gin shop. And yet, if you take the time to unpack the contents, it’s not simple at all. It’s full of tension and delicious contradiction. It’s a whole world in the form of a gin shop. The best things in life are like that.
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
