A Salute to the Masters: Bare Soles in Como (A Tribute to Christopher Anderson)

The young artist and Magnum photographer Christopher Anderson published on his agency’s website an awesome photo series, one of the images in it a great symbol of freedom, joy of living outdoors, purity, innocence, candor, and girlhood: the bare sole of a female lifted up, taken at the Central Park in New York. Like many other great Magnum photographers, Anderson explored this interesting body part through photographs. For this tribute, I chose a series of bare feet images I took along the promenade of the lake Como. Take a look!

Living barefoot, as seen in this nice photo of lifted up feet by the Magnum and National Geographic photographer Christopher Anderson, is a symbol of freedom. Born in Canada in 1970, Anderson taught himself to photograph. He is considered one of the most important leaders of the new generation of documentary photographers, and his works straddle the borderline between art and documentary.

Anderson gained recognition for the first time in 1999 for his pictures of a handmade wooden boat with Haitian refugees trying to sail to America but sank in the Caribbean Sea. One year later, he received the Robert Capa Gold Medal for this reportage, and became a Magnum Photos nominee in 2005. He also photographed the stone throwers of Gaza (Palestine) and was the author of two books: Nonfiction (2003) and CAPITOLIO, hailed as one of the best photography books of 2009/10 at the Kassel Photo Book Festival in Germany. Here you can find his personal website, while here is another one of his photographs of the feet.

Despite bare feet (especially soles) being often (wrongly) considered as a “fetish” subject, it is interesting to note that in the Magnum Photos website are many photos of bare soles taken by great photographers like Chris Steele-Perkins (1, 2), Martin Parr (1, 2), Richard Kalvar (1, 2), Ian Berry, Peter Marlow (1, 2), Alex Webb (1, 2), Bruno Barbey, John Vink (1, 2), Alex Soth, and Ferdinando Scianna. There are many other photos in black and white in the same website.

In this tribute to this multifaceted artist, I took inspiration from Anderson’s photo of a girl at Central Park showing her bare soles (as seen in the link above and here). It is part of the series, Skin in Central Park, photographed for the New York Magazine. It won in the Magazine/Editorial category of PDN’s Photo Annual 2014.

Among so many great photographers who had immortalized many barefoot soles on photographs, I chose to dedicated this article to Anderson because his photo was the one that better transmit to me a great sense of freedom together with the joy of sharing pleasure in living outdoors with other people—in this case, a public park. And these soles are so cute, pink, and tender that they give me a sense of innocence and purity. Slightly dirty (a nice perfect imperfection), they convey the impression that the girl had a nice, free day enjoying walking barefoot on the fresh spring grass.

While in Anderson’s Central Park photo was a skyscraper (the symbol of New York architecture) on the upper left corner, my photos have the beautiful lake Como (the symbol of my city, Como) in the background.

Surely, it will be interesting to know why so many famous photographers were and continue to be interested in this body part, not only as a nude subject in particular and not only as an artistic black and white subject (see, for example, this Bill Brandt photo taken in studio; these photo of soles by Aaron Siskind, or this curious photo by Paolo Pellegrin at Milan Fashion Week).

Maybe one reason that drove these street photographers to immortalize this body part is to document our way of life: the care we provide our feet is also linked to our social status, our lifestyle, and our degree of economic well-being. Another reason might be, like for me, that bare feet are considered a symbol of freedom. And again: young and well-cared for soles, as a tender and cute part of the body, impresses upon me a sense of candid innocence. Is it the same for these masters, with their intention in showing every hidden detail of social life and human behavior?

A Salute to the Masters is a series dedicated to great photographers that I like. I posted other tributes for Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, Helen Levitt, Ernst Haas, Stephen Shore, Gabriele Basilico, Robert Adams, Thomas Struth, J.H. Lartigue, Elliott Erwitt, Robert Frank, Gianni Berengo Gardin, André Kertész, Willy Ronis, Brassaï, Rodchenko, Dan Graham, Henry Grant, William Eggleston, Dennis Stock, Juergen Teller, Martin Parr, Peter Mitchell, Mario Giacomelli, David Burnett, Michael Williamson, Bernard Cahier, Harry Gruyaert, Bruno Barbey, Paul Strand, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Lothar Rübelt, David Goldblatt, Henry Cartier-Bresson, Raymond Depardon, Aaron Siskind, Mario de Biasi, Sabine Weiss, Jack Delano, Bill Eppridge, Édouard Boubat, Serge Moulinier, George Krause, Robert Doisneau, Ferdinando Scianna, Robert Capa, Alexey Brodovitch, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Christopher Williams, Pepi Merisio, Josef Koudelka and Izis Bidermanas. I especially love street photography and urban architectural photography.

작성자 sirio174 작성일 2015-11-07 #lifestyle #lake #leisure #relax #feet #barefoot #free-time #italy #como #soles #regular-contributor #a-salute-to-the-masters 기사 공유하기