Vietnam: the Unseen War documentary has a couple of photographs that got me. Although most of the images by themselves I don't know would have done it. I know one of them would have gotten me anyway just knowing it was a wartime photo, the others I need to know the context somehow.
I have cried each time my beloved Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup, and I will cry when they win it again, one day.
I laughed hysterically, then cried, when my daughter was born, and I've been moved to have a lump in my throat at certain pieces of music and some artwork.
Only when my wife returns from a shopping trip.
More seriously, I don't remember ever crying over a photograph but I certainly have over books and movies.
Brian Ellis
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you do criticize them you'll be
a mile away and you'll have their shoes.
Yesterday, I saw my first Karsh. I mean in person, as in his prints. 20 x 24 inches of beautiful portraits. Helen Keller, Muhammed Ali, Einstein, Picasso, Casals, O'Keefe, Shaw, Robert Frost, of course Winston Churchill and more. Yes, I cried. No one could notice, not bawling but I have known these photos for years in books and never seen the originals. They were INCREDIBLE. There were two prints of Churchill. One was 8x10 and I assume a contact print and there was also a 20x24inch enlargement. Fantastic to see the difference. The George Bernard Shaw portrait was I think the greatest composition to my eye, what do I know, but the most moving was Pablo Casals playing cello in an abbey. Einstein was there before you, you could look into his eyes. Hemingway had this sadness. Frost had this wit. Helen Keller had this expression of curiosity and adventure as she was reading brail, if I remember correctly. And then Churchill in 1941 before Pearl Harbor, defiant.
The exhibit is in Nashville, TN and runs for a month.
Art has moved me to tears on a number of occasions. Every time I listen to Gorecki's third symphony, for example. Photography, too. For example, Araki put out two books about his cat, Chiro. The first came out when the cat was young and healthy, the second centering on the late life, declining health, and death of the cat. I have trouble getting through the whole of the book. Lots of very moving documentary photography out there, too.
Today I cried, nearly anyway, when my new chinese bellows arrived and they were the wrong size. I sent pictures and the exact measurements they asked but they took the inside dimension of a square frame and used that as the as the outside dimension of one side of the bellows.You dont even need english to understand 392mm X 392mm. Beautifully made. Its the same in printing, sometimes you put so much work into making a beautiful print of a junk picture, and when you look back from a years perspective? But none of that has anything to do with art making you cry.
David
Well it happens every now and then. Not very often, but it does happen to me. I never had this happen on any of my own images though. I got close out of frustration, but that is hardly what you mean. Sometimes, an image just talks to me and it would remind me of something in my own life and become a symbol for some darker patches along the path. Strangely enough if it happens it is mostly something sad, with books on the contrary it can be something positive or negative, as long as it is a very strong feeling of a character who is believable to me and I bonded over the course of the book.
I've seen some mid-1800s postmortems of grieving mothers holding their dead child that are so heartbreaking to move me to tears. I also tear up when I see Eugene Smith's "Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath." I think it is probably the most moving photograph ever taken.
Commonality in subject...
I teared up when my dog died, didn't quite cry though, that was 12 years ago. I don't think I've cried since I was a kid. I don't know why, I'm not trying to be tough or macho but for some reason I just don't. I do get choked up though every once in a while. I don't think I'm a cold person, but when bad things happen I tend to get very focused on what needs to be done.
As for crying over a print or image, never.
No, don't cry over my own prints. Sometimes I see a movie and shed a tear.
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