Amy's Expansive Corner

Caitlin Burke

Lots of photographers make severe monochrome portraits, but spending the day with Amy early this month reminded me of Irving Penn's corner. He sometimes put his subjects in a tight corner, saying that some felt secure there and others felt anxious, and that it made them immediately 'available' for portraiture. I didn't pose or arrange her as Penn did with his subjects, but I selected all the locations. I placed her, and stepped back to watch.

Amy and I spent several hours making a circuit almost all the way around San Francisco. We stopped in 6 different places, and the Chinese pavilion turned out to be the best - more than a third of the pictures from that day are at this location. Amy is beautiful all the time, and she is very friendly and relaxed around a camera, but in the pavilion she moved more, and more spontaneously, and she was more expressive all around.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Penn

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