God and Razor Wire
by Kris Rasmusson
Title
God and Razor Wire
Artist
Kris Rasmusson
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
For years the church at the corner of La Grave and Goodrich in downtown Grand Rapids caught my attention. It’s triple domes adorned with steeple crosses and the 1920’s brick inlay architecture was an eye catcher. It’s officially called Saint George Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral. To the west and across the street is Wealthy Body Shop. In my Artist Statement there is a line that says “I am ever alert for juxtapositions that express irony, absurdity, and poignancy; I want people to feel both tension and resolution in my compositions.” The gritty Body Shop and the elegant Cathedral side by side expresses just this. The body shop’s yard being bordered in razor wire underscored this contrast. I knew I wanted to position my camera with the razor wire in the foreground and the Cathedral in the background. Everything had to have sharp focus which meant my medium format view camera had to be firmly mounted onto Gitzo tripod with an aperture of f22 and with both the tilt and swing controls carefully biased. I snapped off a shot and then noticed that I had a yellow filter on the lens, left on from an earlier black and white photo shoot. I shook my head at my apparent stupidity, removed the filter and snapped off a few more. When I got the film developed and preliminary prints made I was shocked to see that the ‘mistake’ shot with the yellow filter was a lot stronger than the ones with no filter. Thus my ‘God and Razor Wire’ image is always presented with a yellow hue. It was yet another example of serendipity and how we sometimes swerve onto the best path.
Uploaded
June 28th, 2013
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