Silhouettes

One thing I liked about Palma’s photographs is the way he plays with silhouettes when composing his photographs. On his Instagram for example, he has a very striking picture, from November 8th, of an art project from afar. The art project itself is a flat silhouette, the color is all in the sky and rolling hills in the background. I thought this was an interesting way to photograph this art project. By the nature of the thing, art is usually meant to be the focus of attention of an art gallery or art garden. By photographing it with just the background in color, Palma flips that. It doesn’t necessarily change the fact the art is ultimately the subject of the photo, but it does both detract and add something to the sculpture itself. The sculpture loses the color it would have had, which detracts something from it (after all, the artist certainly intended audiences to see it’s color), but it also makes the audience think more deeply about what could have been there. Similarly, the silhouette plays with a point of view, letting the audience guess what the object looks like in a three dimensional space (Something akin to a crane lift? But how wide are the legs of the crane? Does the balance weight hang in the middle, or to the side?). The photo, and the others like it on his page, both retract from, and add to their subjects, in a way I find very interesting.