Two images, nearly 45 years apart, explore the same theme. One way to portray the human sense of aloneness is to put the subject alone in a large context, almost to the point of being almost meaningless, hard to find. The subject in this context is either not whole ( as in the Coney Island image) or is stepping into the shadow ( as in the Telegraph Hill image from 1970). Most photographers would explore this theme by focussing closely on the subject, as in a portrait with certain facial expressions to convey the theme. In both of these images the viewer is forced to look longer and closer to find the subject. To further emphasize the theme I picked places that are normally associated with lots of human traffic and times when that traffic might be minimal or non-existent.

Just as an aside: To shoot both of these images I used the same strategy, that is planting myself and camera in a location, waiting for the image/shot to come to me. This, too, is contrary to what is generally taught in photo classes; they always stress scouting your location ahead of time and going out with a plan of what you want to shoot. All good and well, but sometimes breaking the rules allows for surprising results.

Normally I let my images do the “talking” and let people decide what they see and how they see it. With these two images I got a sense of personally coming full circle, something a few words, would help to explain how they came about and how my perceptions are formed.