Guitar leaf
- 📍 Location: Quais de Seine, Paris, France
- 📅 Date: 2022
A street musician photographed from directly above, on the stone of the quay, with his shadow spread out beside him and the shape of the guitar drawn on the ground. The man occupies the upper left, the shadow the lower right, and between them there is nothing but pale stone.
The whole picture depends on the angle. From the quay itself this is a man playing a guitar, which is a photograph that has been made ten million times. From the parapet above, it becomes two objects, a person and a drawing of a person, and the guitar appears twice, once solid and once flat.
Midday sun is usually the enemy of street photography and here it is the instrument: only a high sun produces a shadow compact enough to stay inside the frame and dark enough to read as a shape. I exposed for the stone so the shadow would go to near black.
The lower quays fill with musicians as soon as the weather turns, and the acoustics under the bridges are genuinely good. Most people walk past. Some sit down on the stone for an hour.
I wanted a portrait taken from a position where a portrait should be impossible, and a shadow that turns out to be the better likeness.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
