Desmo,
I understand your point and sometimes sympathise with this perspective. And then sometimes not. It is true that an audience often wants more than the images, particularly in an exhibit, whereas the photographer holds an idealism about the power of imaging, akin to the cliche that a photograph speaks a few thousand words.
I did not know the gallery feature existed, and Myakish's excellent work even less. Yet on studying the image, I can sense why the power in the imaging explicit. It moves me and when I reflect on it, here's why.
The aesthetic of the image:
1. I am struck at how dark and recessed the foreground subjects are: these s are ordinary women, perhaps peasants. I imagine this because of their working forearms, clothing and expressions. Tthe sombre tones of these peasant women conveys that sense of gloom and darkness against a lighter zone VI of mist, perhaps fog, perhaps smoke.
2. The composition intrigues me: as my eye meets the image, I'm suddenly struck by a woman's hand arising towards her own mouth, choking her own words. She refrains from speech, in a suppressed act and stands as a subject, stout and portly in the middle of the image. Her body language is connected by a rising arm and mirrored by her fellow worker (these are not men, yet appearing to be doing a man's chore by western cultural values). Her companion has a different personality; her face is engaged and busy with an open mouth, seemingly indifferent to the mute expression of the first woman.
3. How intriguing that the trees and buildings collapses me from left to right, back towards the women. This is the strength of the composition: foregrounding the sombre tones of the two peasants, against the lighter mist in the background. This is why the peasant women centre my attention: it enables me to pay more attention to the personal expressions of the subjects.
4. As a photographer, I infer this is a wide-angle lens, used in order to arrive at the image's composition from an intimate distance. It achieves a closer appreciation of the
subject, and in return, conveying a sense of closeness to a sense of sombriety or despair of the first woman, to the contrast of the next..
The woman who covers her mouth - says nothing - her words are recapitulated in silence. It gives rise to an ominous mood in the image for me. Why should the photographer say anymore than his subject? Who are we like most? The woman who holds her tongue and possibly private grief, or her companion who talks away indifferent to her expression?
Strangely the image conveys a sense of death or gloom to me: I even wonder if the first woman is holding a shovel to bury someone, affected by the smoke in the air, or suffocating for freedom from the menial chore and man's labour. It is not empirical evidence I search for in the image: I do not need to know if this is fact or not: the image generates that mood of gloom which is so well wrought in a seemingly simple" snapshot".
It is that ominous mood which the image evokes - that moves me. If there was a lengthy essay written underneath the image like this, it would close down what I sense from the image. Do you see the image in your own way, after I've belted out mine? It becomes harder for an audience not to become "shaped" by the words, instead of working out his own relationship to the image.
Granted, that may alienate some viewers; perhaps we look at too many images, suffering from supersaturation without being able to absorb meaning anymore.
"Without context it is merely a snapshot of some people, well composed and exposed perhaps but it has no meaning for me and offers me no understanding of the people within."
I don't know if what I've said helps you to reconsider the image. Perhaps there are images which move us differently because of our own experiences,, and therefore appreciation of other cultures or images, which at first can seem so far removed from resonating with our own.
Regards,
