Special Guest Feature: Raoul Eshelman
Photo by Rachel Oakes, 17, UK
“This is a startling, brilliantly composed photo!
What we first see, expressed in the plainest of terms, is a boy with plants reflected on his back and face.
What makes the picture surprising, unsettling, and beautiful is the interplay of forms, textures, and planes. The plant or flower shadows on his back seem to be acting out a two-dimensional shadow theater, whereas the blotchy shadows on his face follow its curvature and look almost as if they had been painted on him.
The focal point of the picture is not the boy’s face, which is turned away, but his ear, which forms a dark pattern that interacts with the deep shadows on his back. The smoothness of the boy’s back and face contrasts wonderfully with the brightly defined swirl of his hair, which sends our gaze back to the shadows and sets the whole picture in motion again.”
Raoul Eshelman
Professor at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. Prof. Eshelman has a special interest in the visual art and is an author of numerous articles on photography, film, literature and architecture as well as two books on development of culture across different disciplines