lose-lose situation
 detail of 1973 collage from journal - foto by smith someone wanted to know why 14 fotos have disappeared from my online memorial collage of Mother Dwarf’s last art outing - a piece i called The First & Last Annual Gathering Of The Norman Rockwell Lawn Poets Society. those 14 fotos featured a young child. today the father asked me to take her name and fotos offline. for some reason, even though they’ve been online for 3 years, he decided they were a threat to his daughter. i don’t think so - there’s no way the child now can be identified from her fotos then, there’s too great a change from the one-year old person to the 4-year old… i checked the laws and found i didn’t have to remove them because they were taken in a public place. and i didn’t want to remove them because it was a special collage honoring my mother’s last gathering - she died 6 weeks later. but i couldn’t leave them up because even if i don’t understand his logic, he’s still the parent and it wouldn’t be right not to comply. so i blanked them out, just left a note on each explaining they were removed per his request. this way it loses its magic, but continues as an interactive performance art piece. this is a lose-lose situation for me. it was one of my favorite foto montages. its magic came from the year old child interacting with my dying mother. the piece was also a factor in my winning my wife’s love. the father’s an artist and poet as well, and i found his request i eviscerate one of my creations somewhat insensitive. it left a bad taste in my soul all day, ate at my mind. but eviscerate i did. so be it. this it is the it it is. now i leave this slice of doubt behind and go on to the next slice. they say life is what keeps happening to you while you keep trying to figure out what’s going on.  internet / store across the street - foto by smith |
A good soul is more important than a good collage and you’re a good soul smith
Why not ask Lady to “blur” the child’s facial features, the way they do on TV news? She could do that in PhotoShop very quickly. Sure, it’s won’t have the same impact, but you’ll get to keep the photos online and he has his daughter unidentifiable.
thank you sire - good words from a good spirit. much appreciated.
Steve perhaps you could remove the girl from the photos with photoshop. Just a thought.
the girl is what makes the piece work - her youth, innocence and joy versus mom’s skeletal weariness. blurring the girl or removing her guts the piece.
as it is now, each foto jappears black, so there’s an air of mystery. best to leave her gone and she and he unnamed.
i’m a found object artist - i take what is and play with it. photoshopping a picture (except for trying to enhance color, hue and sharpness) is against my artistic philosophy. i rarely even crop fotos - rather compose via mind and eye while taking the foto and then use the whole thing.