southerngentleman

Jeremy Green “Your Most Ob’t Servant” 10/29/22

My family fought on the Union side during the Civil War, and one family member died in that conflict. The “carte de visite” was a popular sort of calling card, in the 1860’s. They were traded among friends and acquaintances socially, and this one ended up in a trunk in the attic of my home. I don’t know who the young man pictured was, but he signed the back in scrolled handwriting “Your Most Ob’t Servant.” In my history studies I’ve learned that in that era even the most vaunted of gentlemen signed letters that way (“Your Most Obedient Servant”), so it is anybody’s guess as to whether this man was free or not, but he certainly was a gentleman. I arranged these old things in my 1860’s desk last night for the game today. I enjoyed assembling the picture and working with the new AI masking in Lightroom on this image.

Jeremy Green “Southern Comfort” 3/22/20

The decision last night was to do something with hands for the Daily Photo Game: hands folded, a hand holding a smoking cigar, then hands in a portrait. That followed the game better. After arriving there the stream of consciousness and intuition took over, resulting in this image a long time later in the wee hours of the night. This is a single photograph shot with my camera on a tripod with a 5 second time delay and my own hands inserted over an ancestor’s portrait painting on wood panel, then the image was manipulated in Lightroom to a great extent. No amount of time in a darkroom could have achieved this, at least by me, and it’s marvelous. The painting is the same one I used in my play of 1/2/2020 entitled “House Guests.” The current buzz is “don’t touch your face” but that’s not where this idea came from. It has more to do with racial relations in American history and the sweet, loving relationship I have had with certain African Americans in my youth who helped raise me.