2

in Bellocq's time, (1912) one has only to look at other examples of photography of the period. The technique is the same, the tripod camera, the slow lens and film, the subject deliberately posed for the photographer, a singular form, composition, the direct front view, is something all pictures of that time have in common. Yet within this limited convention, Bellocqs photographs stand out. It is the subtle but telling difference that makes him a great artist.

Take under very similar circumstances, at different times a hundred different photographs and let them stand the same girl, in the same room in front of the same view camers and each would come up with a slightly different picture. But I wonder, would any come up with a picture better than the rest. If Bellocq was one of those photographers, I believe he would. It is a continuously amazing thing that this impersonal machine, the camera, should render not only the surface of the visible world, but is capable of rendering so sensitively the personality of the photographers.

[Word below: feeling]

Of course there is no such thing as "very similar circumstances," no two moments in time are ever the same for two people. But the good photographer works within the subtle changes, the chance operations of time and he makes them work for him.

Tipped-in Page

[Tipped in page] Time - the historical interest - B. transcends time

the people are as alive as today.

minor details of place.

the girls themselves come alive as individuals

reaction to [illegible] of general category + individuals

the subject matter - the nude - cloths.

add [unified?] of distent [sic.] time view from today

michrocosm + machrocosom [sic.] - the seed containing the whole world

microcosm macrocosm

transient

permeate

transhumanize

The film in the camera

viewing - framing - done, the photographer concentrates works with the expression of the subject alone.

photography used as wish fulfilment [sic.]

sexual content - unspoken

* repore with material - both outcastes [sic.]