Tanneryville Girl.*

That is a very moving photograph.

To me, that photograph deserves a name because to me, that photograph is art. There's a lot there. The girl, holding a baby, looking so small against nature, overwhelmed by nature, as she was at that time in reality and is in the composition. Nature can be protective as well as overwhelming and here the trees shelter the girl and baby. People have sought shelter under trees as long as there have been trees and people. The trees form a little protective cove for the girl--Boy, that girl is young; at first I thought she was the mother of the baby, but in enlarging it no, she's only 12 or 13 years old. And there's another child, looks like a boy, probably her brother, that I hadn't noticed, obscured to the girl's left, his hand up, resting or almost resting on the girl's shoulder. And the little dog. Hadn't paid any attention to the dog. The four living beings in that photograph are all huddled together, looking very small, in that little cove created by the trees, the branches almost embracing them, Mother Nature offering protection against Nature-the-destroyer in the same photograph. There is a combination of opposites in the same composition: protection and destruction--look at that destroyed house, beauty and ugliness--look at that discharge pipe, the steel girder, the concrete barrier, power and vulnerability, violence and tenderness. The combination of opposites, of things that don't go together, make the composition a little surreal. It's a little like a surreal painting. The colors, those soft, hazy blues and greens and browns, are stunningly beautiful, almost too beautiful; I wondered if they were real.

I first saw Tanneryville Girl as a thumbnail on my computer. It didn't look real to me. I thought: "Rudolph F. Ingerle"...

...and I groaned. Why groan? Some people think Ingerle's paintings are art.

I thought of Ingerle because the themes are similar. Girl, isolated in nature...Well, actually, white girl, skin dipped in mercurochrome, posing as Indian girl isolated in nature.

Right? Similar themes? Art? Oh God.

Oh my God. Stop. Please. Enough.

Song of Nile. "Flapper Girl as Song of Nile." There is nothing "real" about Ingerle's work. Those aren't real Indian girls in those tube dresses, that isn't a real Egyptian girl with that Kiribati sea shell bra. Those are flapper girls Ingerle used as models. Those colors aren't real. I groaned because Ingerle's paintings are awful. If they are art, they are awful art, dreck.

Posing: Was Tanneryville Girl posed?

What's the matter with posing? Lot of art is posed. Art portraiture is all posed. Yes...Yes, but if the artist, painter or photographer, buys the pig, butchers the pig, and tells the family to stand there next to it, it's not real. Something is being presented as real that is not.

Got me there. Formal posed portrait. Superb art photograph. Does it matter that in addition to posing Churchill, "Sit over there, like that," Karsh grabbed Churchill's cigar, knowing that that would produce the famous bulldog scowl, and then immediately snapped the shutter? Huh? Ah, yeah! The artist had intervened, he had caused that. Just like Shelby Lee Adams and the pig. Yes...No! Karsh's intervention was to provoke a reaction. That is different than saying "Sir Winston, SCOWL." The artistic product of Karsh's intervention still works, it looks real, you wouldn't know that the artist had intervened unless you were told. We all knew Churchill's bulldog scowl and that was it. Adams' pig doesn't work. The artist's intervention is clear. The artistic product is stilted, it doesn't look real.

I clicked on the Tanneryville Girl thumbnail to enlarge it. Was it a painted photograph, like some knucklehead had taken watercolors to it to "improve" it? I looked at it closely and it wasn't painted over. Those stunning, soft, hazy colors were real as real.

I can't say it wasn't posed, how would the photographer just happen to be there? Where was "there?" But, if it was posed, if the photographer told the young girl to take the baby over there in that tree
cove, right there! and take her little brother--and the dog-- it still works, you can't tell it's posed. It looks real. No...What am I saying? Of course that would matter. That would destroy the integrity of the photograph. That photograph is being presented as real. If the photographer posed those kids, and the dog, that would ruin it.

That's real. Doesn't look real but it is. Those Renaissance colors look too vivid, don't they? They're real, unretouched. Some guys just have all the luck. No, some photographers just have an "eye," they see something that we may not notice and instantly capture it. Photographer Chris Condon did that there. And it's not posed, either!

After looking at Tanneryville Girl I became convinced that it was real, unposed, unretouched. It is beautiful, it embodies content, it is a very moving photograph. To me, it is art, real, good art. Having
made those judgments I then thought: "eerie beauty"...

...and I felt embarrassed.

*I have changed this from Girl from Tanneryville. It it is not fair to Sandee Gertz Umbach to use the exact title that she gave to her poem. That title is hers. So the photograph henceforth is Tanneryville Girl. At least here.