Exposure: Ted Daniels

Crime Scenes

All photos ©Ted Daniels. All rights reserved.

"I call these 'Crime Scenes' because all of them suggest to me a noirish look at urban life, and I say noirish not just because they're black and white. 'Face in the Crowd' for me carries this notion best. I shot it at the Great Big Easter Human Be-In in Central Park back in about 1967. Nobody remembers that now, but it was the first big hippie fest on the East Coast. This guy in the death's head mask conveys brilliantly (and maybe even on purpose) the inevitability waiting full time, perhaps especially in moments of sunny indulgence like that one. I wonder if he's picking out the photographer bending over his Rollie just in front of him. Parenthetically, photo labs at the time said this was the most frequently photographed event they knew of.

"Another early shot, 'Location Location Location,' is I believe in the North End of Boston. It's place here I think is obvious; notice the cages stacked outside the shop door and reflect that this guy is butchering animals there, not just selling the meat. Is the dog next? Am I?

"'Playground' is also from Boston in the '60s; it suggests vividly to me the prison that childhood could so easily be in those days. I wasn't far from that state and still smarting from it.

"'Ring Bell' (there's a barely visible sign saying that in the image) and '1517' are across the street from each other near Lancaster Avenue. Damaged buildings like these suggest to me the overlooked poignancy of neglected age. They're worth commemorating for the anonymous lives they once held. The same holds equally true for the three Eastern State shots; these are all from last spring. Eastern State, of course, is a macabre monument to this same neglect, as much as it's an embodiment of it in its present incarnation. It was a crime scene in every possible sense of the term. I suppose these three probably make clearest the point about everyday menace in urban life. I derived the concept from them.

"'Hostage' is a shop window in Northern Liberties. It was closed at the time, and looks to be permanently in that condition. The dressy oriental doll evokes something of the princess in the tower-fairy-tale motif for me; she sits there stoically awaiting rescue.

"'Descending a Staircase' is a little one-off, I think. But the sinister converging verticals and the woman walking down stairs suggested Duchamp's famous nude.

"This all sounds like I have something I'm trying to say in these pictures, and I don't believe I operate that way. I like to think that the world is saying stuff all the time, and I'm just trying to transmit that. These are all afterthoughts.

"I've been doing photography as a hobby since I was about 12; that's 50 years now. Aside from a couple of useful classes at U Arts, I'm self-taught, trying now to make something of my work in retirement. I'm participating in a photo show currently at Salon des Amis gallery in Malvern."

Technical: "There’s not a lot to be said about technical aspects of these shots. They’re all 35mm negatives scanned and Photoshopped for contrast and brightness, and cleanliness. The only other technical note that occurs to me is that 'Descending' was shot in wide angle to give it those converging verticals."

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