Fresh from trying to edit a 1500-word essay on why you can't talk about art, and re-visiting this shot from time-to-time for a little over a month now, it is reinforced that while you cannot say what art is or how it does what it does, you can burble on lamely about some of the things in it.
Ah, composition/content. Those four interlocking triangles, arranged by size clockwise from lower right. That may not have been consciously deliberate, but it's not serendipity, not accident. I think it's the 'T' gene in play; innate, born talent - you see it, you know it without knowing it; it appears in the air over your head or as a silent command, and the shot gets made. The same ineffable factor in all your best photographs.
The pointing figure gives movement to the whole, to even the semi-static figures - the woman completes her glance down and small kick at the sand and the old gent anoints his belly and pate with swirls of propitiation and prayer and they are animate, and the animation invites or compels narrative because there is a story being told, but the viewer must complete the details for himself. Looking at this rich photo demands, compels participation. And that is one foot print, the spoor of art.
Or so it seems to me.
