Fraught at Freddy's

Shopping at the Fred Meyer big box store - homage to Andreas Gursky.

I honestly didn't know I was that interested in photography. My art focus for 25 years has been primarily watermedia in works on paper. But evidently all along I have been observing and thinking about the work of great modern photographers. People like Joel Meyerowitz, Mary Ellen Mark, Diane Arbus, Andreas Gursky, Richard Avedon, Edward Burtynsky.... I want to add Chuck Close, though his brilliant work seems more about photography.

I still remember the shock of seeing Gursky's '99 cents' for the first time. I'm sure that's what drew my eye to this scene at the grocery. I chose this shot because the vulnerability of a young mother and baby in the face of overwhelming commercial interests seems to personalize Gursky's abstract assault on the eyes in '99 cents.' I felt it doubly, since I had gone to Freddy's on a specific errand, and with ALL THIS STUFF they didn't have what I came for.

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Took a long photography walk this afternoon, up the onramp past Union Station and across the Willamette River on the Broadway Bridge. So many good pictures that I'm thinking of joining Flickr! What have I gotten myself into? :)