PHOTO
The photograph was taken at the public library in inner Copenhagen. It portrays an elderly woman, who is retired as an artist. In the foreground of the picture is the table that the lady is sitting by. On the table there is a cup of coffee, a jar of sugar, a magazine that the lady is reading and a napkin. The lady is looking up from her magazine, participating in a conversation with us as we are asking her questions. In the background we can see a man rushing by on the street outside the glass doors. Another woman is sitting in a chair by the window. The colours are golden and there is an intense white light coming into the room from the windows. We walked into the library expecting to find some young-studying-stereotypes. There were plenty of those people sitting in the library, but what caught our eye was this older lady sitting outside the circle of the young studying people. She seemed calm and relaxed in composition to the stressed and busy all around her.
She spent this morning in the library reading interior magasins and drinking coffee. We asked her why she prefered to come to the library instead of staying home reading, and she answered the she likes the atmosphere and that it’s nicer to come here to read magazines, instead of buying them at full price. Also she lives just nearby. We chose the photo because this exact photo had another feeling than the others we took, also talking to her while we shot the series of photos made an impact on us. She was very smiling and open, maybe because we had the art in common. But we also got the impression that she was very settled with her situation. A lot of people would feel awkward by sitting alone in a public space, but she did not give us that impression at all. Furthermore, the photo has a good composition. The older lady is placed in the golden section. So is the older lady by the plant in the background, and without her the photo might seem empty. The sugar in the jar placed in the foreground creates a line pointing towards both the old lady as well as the center of the photo. The photo fits the criteria of press photo because we walked into the library and asked a woman some question that started a conversation and took the pictures during the conversation. This makes it a press photo, as we did not create a certain setting or manipulate the photo in that way. Moreover, we did not use editing that is considered wrong for press photos. Based on the information we have from the woman and based on the stereo of her type we would place her in the green and pink area of the minerva model, because she is female, was a craftsman before she retired as well as she reads magazines.