From the Vault of Art Shay: A Happy Accident

By Art Shay in Arts & Entertainment on Aug 10, 2011 7:00PM

Art Shay

The great mime, Marcel Marceau, was a friend of mine and when he came to Chicago Algren, my wife Florence, and I would see one of his performances then have a late supper together in Greek Town. Once, in a Paris-type rain across from Greek Islands, Marcel was fascinated by the skills of the parking valets and took up a position in their queue. As cars slid past him in the rain, Marceau whipped off his brown houndstooth cape and made believe he was a bull fighter evading the metallic monsters as if they were taurines. With a few graceful actions actions he had turned a Halsted Street parking lot into a bull ring in which people, sliding into the monsters, encouraged Marcel, shouting, "Huh Torro..."

Marceau and the editor of B&W magazine, collected photographs, and both connoisseurs bought this picture in the same week. The editor rewrote the title called it "The Three, Possibly Four Stages of Women." Both editor Rasmussen and actor Marceau understood the fourth, unborn person in the picture, was the unborn baby being carried by the Hispanic stroller.

Each of them loved the reflected old woman in the picture. To me, she was the most remarkable figure in the picture because she was a mere reflection. Some glaziers had momentarily leaned a pane of glass meant for an adjacent liquor store, on the bridal shop window. Before they moved it again I had captured the picture shown, old woman and all.

The dictionary word for "happy accident" is serendipity and it was made up by English novelist Horace Walpole in 1754 to express that felicitous thought exactly.

The photographer is, or always should be, watching for the happy accident that elevates one of his or her pictures from the mundane snap to the pantheon of people's art.

I have listened to aesthetic conversations about photographs enough times to fall asleep or begin yawning when symbolism rears its cobra-head to spit at you with venomous meaning you didn't realize your snapshot was captured.

When you win the lottery, accept the fact that luck had a hand in it. The rest is Susan Sontag-ish bullshit. It was she, as I recall, who remarked that the telephoto lens was really a phallus.

If you can't wait until this time every Wednesday to get your Art Shay fix, please check out the photographer's blog, which is updated regularly. Art Shay's book, Chicago’s Nelson Algren, is also available at Amazon.