If music is the common language, Jazz is tongues.

 

         

        Photographing people requires the ability to push social boundaries. The nakedness people feel in front of a camera is, even in the age of cell phones, very real and has to be negotiated in a way that is delicate, deliberate, and somewhat spontaneous; it has to feel natural and normal; safe.

        Commanding the question of “what gives you the right to take my picture,” with subtlety, but also definitively and quickly is a trick tech manuals can’t cover. The window of time you have to earn trust and access the unguarded self before anyone thinks about it too much is slim, the risk of upsetting people is high, and with limited tools beyond language in gestures and facial expressions, mastery seems out of reach. 

        Right before I went to Fishbones I passed a girl behind the counter of a food cart. Her eyes had followed me for half the street. I assume it’s my goofy body or goofy hair or just the fact that I’m a foreigner, but the thought occurred to me it could have been my camera which was dangling around my neck. So I made the universal “clicky finger” sign to ask if I could take her picture. She was embarrassed and very nervous but nodded. I tried to capture that moment of smiling awkwardness, but a fluorescent light behind her head washed her face in shadow. I usually show the picture immediately and exclaim how well I think it turned out. In the resulting smiles of flattery I snap a second set of photos which usually turn out even better, but I couldn’t do that here. So I just said “kop kun kop” and left, knowing that I left her feeling just as awkward… not having any idea if she really wanted her picture taken in the first place. This kind of interaction makes me feel horrible and try hard to learn from them.

        Minutes later that I showed up at Fishbones with my goofy body and my goofy hair to squeeze myself through the tight seating around the bar and try to make friends, be a drummer and take some pictures over the next few hours.

        Maybe someday I’ll be able to write more about what works. I know there are times when I nail it. Fishbones and Queen Bee were somewhere in the middle. Onward.