written by: Kahren Jones Arbitman<\/p>\n
Frequent travelers to and the citizens of Mexico will recognize them all: the wizened crone holding wilting calabaza flowers, the one-legged woman plunking her ukulele, the insistent man hawking rubber maps, the costumed ladies selling beribboned dolls. \u00a0These peddlers and panhandlers fill the city\u2019s alcoves, stoops, and walkways, their places staked out by habit, or more likely, by inviolate street rules.\u00a0 But who are these familiar yet frequently anonymous people who form such an integral part of the culture?\u00a0 \u00a0Dirk Bakker, professional photographer and director of photography at the Detroit Institute of Arts, wants to discover if life-sized, color photographs can reveal the personalities of Mexico\u2019s street people.<\/p>\n
To help overcome his subjects\u2019 understandable reticence to his proposal, Bakker hires a driver and translator, buys hearty food, and creates a comfortable environment in his studio.\u00a0 Using natural light, a backdrop of gritty white plaster, and simple floor tiles, he fashions a slightly elevated, non-threatening stage for the self-revealing portraits he hopes to coax from his subjects.\u00a0 Quietly asking about their lives and families, Bakker waits for each to settle into a pose.\u00a0 What results are startlingly intimate performances played out in front of the camera: some clown, some stand defiantly, others retreat into a shell.<\/p>\n
Then, in what must have been mystifying to his sitters, Bakker lies on the floor and aims his camera directly at their hands.\u00a0 The choice of focus is quite deliberate; hands are the consistent point of interaction between street people and those who occasionally drop \u201ca little something\u201d into their upturned palms.\u00a0 By altering the expected focus on faces, Bakker allows his sitters\u2019 hands to lead the storytelling.\u00a0 And what stories they tell.\u00a0 Invariably work-worn and often gnarled and arthritic, hands become welcoming, withdrawn, defensive, content.<\/p>\n
Another important artistic consideration is Bakker\u2019s lowered vantage point which literally and figuratively elevates his subjects.\u00a0 In an insightful turnabout, viewers are now confronted by people who loom above them, no longer content to sit with bowed heads awaiting the generosity of strangers.\u00a0 A similarly important consideration is Bakker\u2019s decision to set aside a telephoto portrait lens that tends to flatten and in many ways flatter the sitter in favor of a \u201cnormal\u201d lens that conforms to the angle of human vision.\u00a0 He is looking for verisimilitude.<\/p>\n
While the photographs\u2019 technical virtuosity is undeniable, Bakker does not want digital wizardry or artistic license to overshadow an honest presentation of his sitters.\u00a0 Fortunately, documentation and artistry can happily coexist in a single photograph. Simultaneous with documenting a life, these images also present a riot of mismatched color, pattern upon pattern, ruffles, fringes, buttons, makeshift belts, and other picturesque details that dazzle the viewer like a well-painted abstraction. \u00a0Equally arresting are the piercing expressions of many of the life-sized figures that could easily find prototypes in Diego Velazquez\u2019s haunting, solitary misfits.\u00a0 Despite the artist\u2019s intent to capture only what his sitters give him, viewers cannot help but mentally embellish the individual stories.\u00a0 For this writer, one telling detail is an elderly gentleman\u2019s hemmed cuffs that touchingly speak of an attentive caregiver.\u00a0 It\u2019s nice to know he\u2019s not alone.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
written by: Kahren Jones Arbitman Frequent travelers to and the citizens of Mexico will recognize them all: the wizened crone holding wilting calabaza flowers, the one-legged woman plunking her ukulele, the insistent man hawking rubber maps, the costumed ladies selling beribboned dolls. \u00a0These peddlers and panhandlers fill the city\u2019s alcoves, stoops, and walkways, their places […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-past","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyglotgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyglotgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyglotgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyglotgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyglotgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=787"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/polyglotgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":843,"href":"https:\/\/polyglotgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787\/revisions\/843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyglotgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyglotgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyglotgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyglotgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}