Where are you when I take your picture?

Edoard Boubat goes on to say: You are not an image, but a living woman.  Your eyes are a mirror, in which everything that is not you is reflected: clouds, trees, birds, and me.

I've been thinking about portraits a lot lately. My portrait of a red-haired, smiling young woman with a copious supply of freckles has always appealed to me.

There is a new book (hot off of the press later this month) "Baldwin Street" by photographer Emmet Gowin. Contary to my pledge to not buy books I ordered one. The self-titled book "Emmet Gowin" (Aperture 2013) is on the table behind me. The stunning cover portrait of the young woman who became his wife is only one of the warm-hearted portraits of her and her family that make up the first part of this book. (f I ever make a portrait that compelling I will be very happy.) It, however, also includes a lot of his newer work -- all spectacularly well done but just not my bag.

"Baldwin Street" (the street upon which his wife's family lived for a couple of generations) is the sole subject as well as the title for the new book. Gowin recently retired from a long and distinguished career teaching at Princeton -- the Princeton Press published the new book. I find it interesting that he and the publisher regarded these "family photographs" as being not only his earliest and longest-pursued (1966-1994) body of work but (in my opinion at least) the most compelling.

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