Street Core Photography
© Roberto Iosupescu
Back in the analog era, sometimes the negative film was exposed by some accidental opening of the back of the camera. Or just because the image was the first frame shot (one or more takes were doomed to be lost). A cool bet was always to make 26 or more takes out of a 24-exposure negative film. Some other times the best picture was at the very last piece of film. And the wrinkled roll-end was giving some abstract effects to the composition. The negative spaces of unexposed or totally burnt areas were quite important. Barthes in Camera Lucida considers the "superimpressions, anamorphoses, deliberate exploitation of certain defects (blurring, deceptive perspectives, trick framing)" some of the surprises (or performances) of the photographer. He missed the negative film-roll defect and its deliberate exploitation? This "defect" is what Roberto's negative space reminds me of. It is so present covering the 2/3 of the image and thus becoming the main subject of the picture. And yet it is full of random surprises and texturised multiple coatings.
The abstraction is overwhelming and unavoidable in a natural way. Going further in our reading of the photograph, the road scene limited in 1/3 of the frame makes its glorious come back with a moment of distress and solitude. The foreseeable emotional impact of an empty wet road and the graphical effect of the white lines, are also given with a twist. With a couple of brush strokes made by the lane and the windshield crack. The surrealism of the landscape is ingeniously avoiding the stereotyped foggy atmosphere. The contour of the rocky masses seems fading, for one moment in the fog, and the next moment in the steamy window. In one single frame, Roberto breaks many stereotyped approaches (the rain drops, the fog, the road, the car windshield). Excellent example of going beyond the obvious, the easy, the flattering frame.