Jay Parkinson on Conscientious
A conversation with Jay Parkinson has been posted on Conscientious, Jörg M. Colberg's weblog. Jay Parkinson is a Baltimore-based photographer whose subjects are mostly aspiring models. Jay's website is at darkshapesprowl.com, and his Flickr stream is here. The thing that amazes me about Jay Parkinson's project “Aspiring” is how he turned his own and his models' main weakness to his advantage. A quote:
I've heard one model say she looks “frumparrific” and like she has an extra twenty-first chromosome. But I think out of the twenty-five or so portraits I have for this project, maybe three or four models added my portrait to their portfolio. I definitely took no offense from this because I understand that these photos would doom many of them to modeling for the “before photos” in anti-depressants advertisements.
A comparison to Wegee is something one would expect the least, yet Mr. Parkinson does make a very strong point by referring to one of Wegee's photos presented at the end of the conversation.