Feminine beauty and more!

There is something voyeuristic about some street photos that I don’t admire. I’d like to think that I never go for a shot that captures someone in a vulnerable or indiscreet state. But our sneaky ways of taking some street photos don’t leave me with a terrific feeling either. Also, while I am personally very much receptive to feminine beauty, I don’t like to fully surrender to the ubiquitous desire for glamour and beauty, no matter how diverse our beauty standards may ever become!

Nonetheless, this photo has some value to me, as in taking it I have plainly responded to a personal impulse, from a sort of ‘object of desire’, and if nothing else, perhaps going through the trouble of taking the photo helps me not fully forget that day of my life at the Photographers Gallery in London which was as always beautiful and inspiring! Also, as a novice street photographer, it has occurred to me that, when the presence of a person in my field of view truly stimulates me to take a photo, more often than not, the wider frame of the lens (here a 28mm) invites a few other elements into my vision, that I may not have been consciously aware of, but they may work rather well with that initial stimulus. It is as if the photograph puts my ‘object of desire’ in a wider context of life; the ephemeral life of all kinds of people, ‘beautiful’ or not. 

I don’t see this photo as a particularly good one by any stretch, but I’d like to think that it ever so slightly touches on some of our desires more collectively, and that despite, or just because of, all the graceful people it depicts, it is a bit less objectifying than what you’d expect from a sneaky photo of a tall and beautiful young woman!