Ground Zero

Wendy McMurdo encouraged me to take the next few weeks to experiment.  I have some new approaches in place to get to GROUND ZERO of imagination.

Straight to the free play of kids in their own environment.  

Fig. 1: Slade 2020. The Hunt.

As I look toward this new approach I am inspired by the portrait work of  Mary Ellen Mark.  

Mark gets right to the heart of personality in her images.

Fig. 2: Mark 1992. Clayton Moore, The Former Lone Ranger, Los Angeles [photograph]



"It's not a good idea to try to ask people to behave in ways that don't seem natural for them" (Mark 2015). The picture is not all about you as a photographer, but about the person themselves.  Mary Ellen Mark represented the distinctive but commonplace (Oxford University Press 2018). And she looked for the 'human' elements that connect to all of us.

These words of wisdom will inform my methodology when working with children, particularly in their own environment. Children are both commonplace AND distinctive, and I want to represent them as such.  If I want to capture a child's natural imagination, then the images themselves need to reflect that. All the while striving to bring out the universal elements of imagination that connect to us as humans, even if in a performative way.




Figure 1: Bren Slade. 2020. The Hunt.
Figure 2: Mary Ellen MARK 1992 From: Mary Ellen Mark 2015 On Portraiture and the Moment, Photo District News. Vol. 35 Issue 9, p42-44. 3p. 

Mark, M.E.  (1940–2015) 2018, , 2nd edn, Oxford University Press.