In the first homework in my Photography Class, I chose to talk about the story “A Father, A Son, A Disease, and A Camera”. This story made the author know his father more because of photography. His dad David had one of the diseases that makes the relatives of the patient so close to him. That’s what happened with Cheney Orr, he used to visit him, spent time with him taking photographs. Cheney Orr was 21 when his father received this diagnosis. The camera offered a way to bridge that gap. It was an excuse to visit regularly and a portal through which to understand the disease.
In these photos we see in the story some happy, sad, depressing, fun moments and that’s how photography works through sight. As the illness progressed, David seemed to grow more comfortable with the camera and to understand why his son was taking pictures, but it was hard to know for sure. I think David wanted to take many photographs also for him, for memory. There are photos that has a close up to the character and some of them it’s even far and we can see that in the photo of David in the water where swimming in the Atlantic Ocean (second photograph) where we can only see his face but this was very attractive where we could only see to colors but also there was a circle in a different color that makes you want to see it or it attractive to your eyes. This photo is also an example of
The first photograph shows Cheney was hugging David and that shows how he loves him in it’s also a happy moment. in the last three photos, showing David in his last days of his life. This can prove my idea of Photography tells a story. If these photos were not in this order, we couldn’t tell what is the story with no text. In these Photographs, the characters in the story are people close to him, help him, Mostly the are the same photos except number 13 where he was in the hospital and there was a patient in the back. i think this photo was purposely to show those lines of the widow on David also reflects on the patient.
The best photo i chose to talk about is number 3. where David gets dressed after a morning of swimming laps at the St. John’s Recreation Center in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. A competitive swimmer in elementary and high school, he was fast in the water and flawlessly performed every stroke. Even as the disease progressed and tasks like tying his shoes or zipping his coat became difficult, in the water he would leave swimmers half his age in his wake. It represents a diagonal lines photograph example. We can see those lines in the lockers door, even the walls. there are horizontal and vertical lines. the line of the window matches the line of the wall and all the locker doors are in a diagonal lines as shown. If David moved to the right or left, we were not going to see those lines i talked about.
Certainly, the son wants to take photos to remember the father. We all do this. but there is something else going on here. We all can relate to this story. It captures the loss of a loved one to a disease. This is a universal human experience. When we look at the photos in this story, we think of our own lives.