Remembrance of Summers’ Past is a reflection of my wanderings on beaches throughout the world which I travelled. Wherever there’s a beach, people will gather and let go. To a great extent, the mask that they wear in their daily life shed.
Artist: Charles Traub
Project: Remembrance of Summers' Past
The seaside is a place where the inhibitions are let loose and people put themselves on display in ways they will not ordinarily do in other public spaces. When the sun shines, all sorts of people will migrate to sit by the water. There is a democracy on the public beach where class, ethnicity, and physical attributions do not matter. It’s OK to “let it all hang out!”- it is a natural human enterprise to lay under the rays.
I’m not particularly one who wants to sit in the sun and bake in the heat. I’m too hyperactive to be still. So my pleasure at the beach is to be the observer, to walk here and there. I like to saunter! What has become apparent to me from the early years from the 70s, when I first started making photographs at the Chicago beach, is that people like to be acknowledged. They are not really inhibited or apprehensive, if you make your presence known and you seem to be interested in their presence. That is my modus operandi. The real world is what interests me. And as a real world witness photographer, I’ve come to expect my subjects when in public are not unconscious about what they look like, how they dress, and how they deport themselves. Most are delighted to be noticed.
© Charles Traub
curator : Ecaterina Rusu