the backdrop project: maurice.
13 Apr 2011
Last Saturday, while waiting for my film to get processed, I spent an hour at Commonwealth Bar, drinking a bit of wine and reading a ridiculously good, heartbreaking novel that you all must get your hands on right this minute. The barkeep and I struck up a conversation, and I took the opportunity to see if he’d like to participate in the Backdrop Project. Let’s blame my excitement over asking a complete stranger if he’d like to take part in a perplexing photography project, and not the wine, on my focusing skills here.
4 Comments
leave one →
hong-an tran 
i think the focus still works here. a different sort of backdrop.
but kudos on approaching a stranger. i’m still terrified of doing that.
(even though bartenders are never strangers, they are “friends we’ve yet to meet”)
yeah, this was my second stranger photo for the project; i’ll post the first one in a few days. both times, i’d shown them a couple of shots from previous backdrop project participants (i’d saved a couple of images on my iphone), so they had a sense of what they were getting into. and both times, they were incredibly obliging, which made me optimistic for future strangers. that said, it’s still a little nerve-wracking!
i just ordered that book on your recommendation! been looking for a lovely fiction to sink into. thanks!
i hope you enjoy it! i’m about 30 pages to the end, and it’s just incredible, with really interesting plays on writing, language, and memory.