One Shot Deal

yearbook portrait

k yusselah

revised

66 The yearbook picture is a one shot deal.

But after having seen it repeatedly over many years, a very solitary image can begin to suggest different ways of looking at it.

Yet in the end -- as in the beginning -- there is that one and only portrait: the one made by the Binghamton, New York, yearbook photographer back in 1966.

Every picture in this study -- if that isn始t too serious a word -- cannot escape its inheritance.

At best, these can only be second generation to that first 1966 picture, the true original.

Any effort to move such a time-bound portrait onto new ground simply becomes a close up that doesn始t fall too far from the tree.

c joseph gordon 2015

If the original is bound by convention to fit into a monotonous straight-jacket, well so be it; as that kind of photo-jacketing is worth every stitch of its time.

Any picture I can make from the first shot is bound to land in monotony. And yet, there is something about that monotony that isnĘźt always monotonous. It took the face of someone I love to teach me that in the beginning and the end: a yearbook picture remains a one shot deal.

Yusselah from the Orange Studio February 1, 2015 The Orange Studio is an experimental space where a solitary person and a group of students can break out the “take-out� Chinese food, light some candles, make pictures, draw, sing, dance and contemplate solutions to the challenges of disabled New Yorkers, here and everywhere.

In loving memory of Donald Slavit.

Had he only lived longer, who knows how much more love your children would have known.