Painter Francis Bacon was never interested in the obvious. "I'm always trying through chance or accident," he explained, "to find a way by which appearance can be there but remade out of other shapes. ... In trying to do a portrait, my ideal would really be just to pick up a handful of paint and throw it at the canvas and hope that the portrait was there." He was after what could be shown with less: "Nine-tenths of everything is inessential. What is called 'reality' ... can be summed up with so much less."
That's why I aim my point-and-shoot so wildly. I'm interested in how body shapes re-assemble at different angles, how paired pictures here engage in their own conversation. I want my camera to somehow render something I wasn't noticing, something different than the ways we're expected to look at one another in public.
I'm not opposing candids to posed shots. Cameras are as much a part of any night out as the DJ, the hosts, and the drinks. Everyone's ready and eager to strike a pose, even if you're steady shooting before and after it in order to diffuse it.
Still, there's a comfort that some of my friends have between the candid and the pose since they're used to me snapping away. One of those friends is Johnny Sanford, as pictured here from the fantastical B*tch @ss Trick and F Word parties. You can see him in the flesh at this Friday's F Word. I'll be there, camera and cocktail in hand.
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