Sunday, September 25, 2011

Sue Chenette: Thinking about pictures

I’ve been thinking about the pictures that get taken, and those that don’t even though my camera is in full-time residence in my purse.


At last night’s recital in the American Cathedral, a picture of the vault into which the trumpet sounds lifted. But not of the white-haired couple several pews in front of us, her hand on the back of his brown suit jacket, massaging when his head drooped forward, the gentlest wake-up touch.


And afterwards, on the Champs Elysées, the young man filming a rap group—song and dance, short skirts, music from a speaker. But not three Japanese girls smiling for a friend’s camera in front of the Yves Saint Laurent display window, their heads tilted toward the famous logo lettered in gilt on the glass. Nor the man seated next to them on the sidewalk with a small brown dog on his lap, a begging bowl and a cardboard sign.

In Paris, with a ready camera, a quick eye, chutzpah and enough time, you could capture a gesture, a stance, a facial expression, for every point on the scale of being.


Just down the Champs Elysées from the Arc de Triomphe, a young man stood near his glowing Eiffel towers, not getting any business. And going home on the métro, another slept through the jostle and laughter as we made our way across the city.


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