At least some of the most iconic photographs, even seemingly spontaneous street photography, are staged. The trick is in making the tableau seem to be in what Cartier-Bresson called “the decisive moment”—a hint of motion blur, a sense that the camera is the eye looking at something that startles it or grabs its attention.
Or, sometimes, it’s just in the framing of the picture. If I had taken this shot from further back and with a wider lens, all would be clear: this is part of an early winter Christmas tree lot at a nearby farm that stages hayrides, sleigh rides, pick-your-own harvest and various other events. There’s a Raggedy Andy next to this Raggedy Ann; there’s a bustling crowd of shoppers just off to the left and a bunch of cars in a parking lot just off to the right. She’s not towering over a forest, just over some 5-foot tall Christmas trees. Still a distinctive sight, mind you, intended to draw the attention of shoppers and emphasize the feeling that they’ve arrived at a destination that is more than just a parking lot full of Christmas trees. But not what she seems to be here, which is some kind of terrifying doll-kaiju crashing through a forest.
For all my continuing struggles with the simultaneous attraction and anxiety of street photography, one reason to walk with a camera around a place crowded with human beings and their structures is just the opportunity to isolate objects and buildings that become something different than they’re meant to be if you cut them off from their contexts.
Mostly that leads to humor. Sometimes to pathos. But always a reminder that we’ve been lying with (or at least exaggerating with) photographs since the beginning.