I found some notes from an exhibition of Hopper’s paintings at the Tate Modern a few years back. I don’t really get art, but I like the few Hopper paintings everyone else does – the Night hawks, Friday morning, etc. The solitary pensive figures, the urban landscapes, the interior spaces framed through windows at night. I can feel the alienation and disaffection (which apparently means estranged and unfriendly). We’re all disaffected these days.
Edward Hopper
Solitary figure in theatre, 1903.
I particularly like photographs and paintings in long shot. Settings, buildings, human spaces, people going about their business. Incidental details, framed, cropped by some structure between observer and observed, some hiding place. For me, this is a window looking out at the world, rather than a window looking in to another’s private space.
Edouard Vuillard
Evening Effect, ca 1895.
Night, cities, shadows, everyday things. Long shots are like stolen glances. This is my style of observational documentary. I don’t want to intrude into people’s lives. I don’t want them to relate to me, or me to them. I’m outside of their lives. So, no street photography, no portraits of strangers, no close ups, no facial expressions. Just the human trading of the agora.