Le déjeuner sur l'herbe.

September 19, 2015, Columbia (Missouri.)
The week was uneventful, full of chores and kids stuff, work, depressing thoughts, some good news on the photography front as I started working on marketing my business again, simple steps that gave me a small morale boost and that is enough, small stuff, kids stuff, a movie in the park behind our school.
The movie was a poor excuse for entertainment, a run of the mill animation with no creativity; the art was in the field below. The scene reminded me of a Renoir painting, something in the quality of the light, the people, families laying out on blankets, just being together, the stuff of life then and now, the kids chasing each other, sunset behind the trees, a baby crying, joy. I took a picture with my phone.
Le déjeuner sur l’herbe, by Renoir, is what came to my mind.
The history of photography is filled with references to painting, and I keep finding echoes of artists I love in photographs I love, like James Nachtwey’s picture of a child crying in anguish, from his coverage of the Yugoslav wars, a mirror of The Scream, by Edvard Munch. There is a certain light in Renoir, and even though I dislike his work, I love his sense of light, and maybe because I was raised among art collectors and artists in a region, in southeastern France, favored by painters, most notably Picasso, Matisse, Chagall and Léger, I can’t help but see the world through their paintings, even the ones I don’t like.
The scene of that movie projection in the field also reminded me of another crowd scene, this summer at the Pont du Gard in another part of the South of France.
The family of man, leisure version.