Personal Space

Arthur Bruso
Jun 7
8 min read

When we realize how

much of us is spent

in rush hour subways

underground

no real exit

it will matter less

what token we pay

for change.

—Audre Lorde

excerpt from “One Year to Life On The Grand Central Shuttle”

I exposed the film that comprises the images for the two bodies of work, Personal Space and Waiting Room, while I was attending graduate school in Philadelphia. My intention was to capture images that I would later translate into paintings. That was the way I worked at that time – to use my own photography as reference material for my large-scale graphite drawings or oil paintings.

The series Personal Space evolved out of one of the rolls of film I exposed while casually wandering around Philadelphia’s Center City on a cloudy afternoon. My intention was to photograph random people on the street. That afternoon I succeeded in capturing a couple of recognizable eccentrics. The man who was always seen carrying a tall pole, I knew him as a character who frequented the gay bars of Center City. He would regale the patrons who were willing to listen that he was a griot, and his staff was a symbol of his authority, superiority, and a connection to his spirit ancestors. More pragmatically, he probably used it for protection on his wanderings as well. For a few drinks and usually a fee, he could be convinced to accompany a captivated patron home, making it clear that he was not gay. His fit physique, pleasant looks, and curly hair had many men willing to risk the possibility of harm given his irrational character and the threating look of his stick. I captured him with his omnipresent griot staff swaggering through Penn Square.

I photographed the denizen who had been eternally banned from every gay bar in Center City because of his anti-social behavior (stealing money off the bar and drinking unattended drinks) presumably stemming from his precarious indigent situation. He eyed me and my camera warily, as he passed in front of the notorious Annex Pub. The Annex Pub was a Center City gay dive bar originally located near the Bus Depot. It was eventually demolished to make way for the urban renewal project that became Reading Terminal Market.

While photographing a street vendor couple, I also inadvertently recorded a world-weary bank customer inside a Continental Bank. Her expression could be interpreted as defeat or resolution. Its ambiguity inferred a story of pathos that could only be guessed at.

These were highlights from that afternoon’s roll of film. The characters I mentioned I singled out because something in their locations and personas implied a compelling narrative. Ultimately, these narrative insinuations did not translate into any visually compelling imagery in the photographs. At the time, I was accessing them as subjects for paintings. What I saw on film did not look strong or interesting enough to stand up to the exploratory demands of a painting. The light was grey and flat; the compositions were repetitive and constrained by the mechanical geometry of the urban architecture. My work at the time had been portraiture and very character driven. While I had captured a few interesting people, their faces were too murky and distant to allow the individuation of their features. The figures looked insignificant in the overwhelming urban concrete surrounding them, none of which added to the composition or their story. I put the film aside.

The images that eventually resulted in Waiting Room, also began as studies for paintings. What initially caught my attention to photograph were the compositional possibilities of the blue safety line painted on the glass walls of the bus shelters. I was interested in the way this graphic element not only bisected the image, but it also created a definite foreground/background in the space – a definitive plane in front of the glass, and a separate space behind the glass even though there was only a half inch of transparency between.

As I further explored the bus shelter idea, I became fascinated by the reflections on the glass walls, which often obscured the figures inside. I was so engrossed photographing this optical phenomenon that I consumed more film than I had intended.

After the images were developed, I was again disappointed with the results. I believed that I hadn’t managed to imbue the subject of reflections with anything exciting or personal. The images looked flat and textureless. I didn’t see personality in the people or a narrative in the figures. I wondered, could I bring more interest into them as paintings, or was the intentionality of purpose just not there? I stored these images away as well.

Back when these photographs were taken, I never considered that my photography was a medium unto itself. I was taking photographs for the express purpose of using them as resources for paintings. Photorealistic painting and large-scale objective drawings had been my goal as an artist since I decided to be an artist. My photographs had a subordinate function, to serve as primary sketches, not as complete artworks.

As my art and my life evolved, I was exposed to increasingly progressive influences in art. Seeing how other artists explored photography as an expressive medium brought about an abrupt change in my creative direction. I wanted to explore photography as more than source material for other projects. I came to the evident realization that I had a considerable back catalog of images that I could be exploring as photographically based ideas. Much of this came about by discovering the photographic work of David Wojonarowitz.

Wojonarowitz’ photography attracted my interest because he devised his own vision and style that avoided any of the photographic rules or techniques that I had learned were gospel in my college classes. He did not use expensive equipment. He used the flash that came as part of the camera. He was mainly interested in the final image, not the process. He ignored traditional photography’s keen attention to lighting effects and tonality. Much of his work did not employ sophisticated darkroom techniques. His photographs were spontaneous, personal, often muddy and grainy. His composition was idiosyncratic. What fascinated me most was his grouping of images together that form a cohesion that would not have been readily apparent without his intervention. As a group, the images he chose formed their own cumulative meaning beyond what each individual image depicted. This image building resonated with me as I looked to find a different way of engaging with my own photographs.

Through Wojonarowitz and other photographic influences, I began to mine my historical photographic archives for images that I could modify, adjust or repeat to fit my newly forming ideas. Putting images together soon became a new language where an image used in one context, found a different meaning in a separate work. Juxtaposing and switching images became like sentence building with the photographs as different phrases. I set aside the constraints of my photographic training which had been about the search for the perfect negative and subsequent print. I never had the patient perfectionism for darkroom. For me, the quality of the print was secondary to the image. I saw this correlation in Wojnarowicz. Under his influence, I felt free to explore photography in a way that made sense to my evolving vision. I could now see success where I had been told or believed there was failure.

This was how I reapproached the two series of photographs that became Personal Space and Waiting Room. I was attracted to something redeeming in the structure of the street photographs, and in the compositional aspect of the bus shelters. I concentrated on the important situational aspects of the images and began by breaking down what that looked like. Through this process something more engaging was revealed.

In each of the images that became Personal Space, I looked at what made the image unique because of its particular location. That would include the figures, the street furniture, and the architecture surrounding them. By isolating certain elements of the photograph and adjusting the heights and width of the resulting rectangles, a rhythm was created that had been latent within the original image. I also realized that I had not only exposed a visual movement that shifted the eye through the image, I had also exposed the social phenomenon of detachment in public spaces – how we surround ourselves in our own sequestered private bubble.

Each of us, as we traverse and occupy public space, is at once part of the urban community but we are also living our separate lives. Some individuals may reveal a glimpse of their personal stories, like the man with the staff, or the man passing in front of the Annex Pub. Perhaps because I knew something of their history, I had the hope that this knowledge would influence or add to the fleeting glimpses I had captured of their transitory passing by. The anonymous others had their lives to live as well, but their stories I could only guess at. In that moment in which I photographed them, the outside observer has only a moment to imagine their fleeting identities in the context of the image. We can perhaps project where they are headed and something of who they are, but that would be a story we create.

The second series, Waiting Room, presented a different challenge. The whole of the series subject matter; the graphic stagnation of the rectangular structure and the reflections on the glass, had also been a painting idea about composition and light. I needed a new interpretation that exploited their photographic origins. I noticed that most included figures, some that were inside the bus shelter, while others stood away, outside of the shelter. By using the edge of the structure as a guide, I separated what was outside from what was inside – even if that meant cutting a figure apart. This small separation of inside from outside heighted the spatial dynamic. By creating that small gap of white space between interior and exterior, each area was given its own focus, while the eye continued to perceive a relationship between the now two separate images. This visual antiphony set up a movement that energized the spatiality and the language of the image.

That small interruption within the image of the bus shelters, changes our perception on space and the social dynamic of waiting. It reveals our collective system of isolationism – the amount of distance we need apart from strangers to feel comfortable. Even when the outside space was empty of figures, the enclosed area of the shelter defined itself as a place of refuge, while the outside remained a place of vulnerability. This isolating of distinct areas of the image became a study in human spatial dynamics.

By breaking apart the image, I was able to represent the personal rational of how people relate in an urban environment among the buildings and sedentary objects on the street, and to explore the dynamics of securing one’s own place in the hierarchy of waiting. The lack of, or excess of, space effects the way each of us responds to our surroundings. We protect our autonomy as we trek to our obligatory destinations, then keep our own counsel as we restively make our journey home. There is rarely magic in the serendipitous encounter with our fellow travelers despite numerous stories to the contrary. There is just the overwhelming push to reach our final destination of security and comfort. To return to the sanctuary of the private lives we left behind. ◆

Personal Space