Listening With My Eyes

Ha! That can be the writing on my grave stone if I ever find the place where to have one.

... This morning, I was looking at a hare hide I had prepared. It had a lot of character, a mix of blood shades that gave the two-dimensional hide a depth of field. I had not decided what to paint on it, so:

                                                   I was listening to it with my eyes

In fact, I suddenly realized that I have been doing exactly that for more than 50 years as a street photographer. When I look through the finder, I listen to the story the person is about to tell. My job is to perfect the timing in pushing the shutter release to capture that story and print it in black and white in my darkroom.

So, I did hear the story of this hide: it had the perfect background for a puma’s face.

… I am still working on it, but wanted to share the thought process with my blog visitors. Here is my dilemma – should it have ears or not. The earless puma is a bit more mysterious, more fluid. 

But the ears, made of hare tail, give a contour and possibly a context.

I do not know how this work is going to end, how I am going to frame it, and what colour will the matting be. For now, I listened to the story of the bare hare hide and made a puma out of it.

Maybe I will decide about the ears if I look longer to the face.

September 8, 2018

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2018