It isn’t Chinese New Year as I write this. It’s late October, and I’ve returned to a photograph that deserves a little time outside the occasion it records.
The lion gets my attention immediately. It would be difficult to ignore. But looking again, I find myself staying with the performer beneath it. His expression has a concentration that holds its own against everything happening above and around him.
I like seeing both together. The performance and the practical business of performing, in the same frame.
When we watch something like this, our attention follows the most conspicuous part. That’s perfectly reasonable. Someone has gone to considerable trouble to make it conspicuous. The head, the movement, the scale of it among the crowd: there’s plenty to take in before we begin noticing anything smaller.
A photograph gives us another chance. We can come back after the occasion has passed and spend longer with something we might otherwise have glanced over. In this one, it’s a face beneath a much larger face.
There’s no need for the performer to look delighted for the picture to feel celebratory. He has something to do. His arms are raised, his attention is on the performance, and his expression belongs to that task. Enjoying something and concentrating on it can look quite different from the outside.
That feels familiar to me. Photography can be absorbing and enjoyable while producing an expression that suggests a minor administrative dispute. Being pleased to be somewhere doesn’t necessarily show on your face while you’re trying to get something right.
Around him, the phones are up. People are finding a view between shoulders, holding their screens higher, trying to take a little of the occasion away with them. Their pictures will differ, even from positions only a short distance apart. Some will have more lion, some more crowd. A few will have an excellent view of the back of somebody’s head.
I rather like that the crowd remains so present here. The foreground isn’t clear. There are hands and screens at the edges, and people close enough to interrupt the view. A tidier photograph would offer something different. This one retains the business of trying to see.
Returning to it now, away from the date and the event, I have less interest in asking it to sum up a celebration. It can be more particular than that.
The performer’s face is what I keep returning to. For all the attention directed towards him, there’s something almost private about his concentration. He’s occupied with doing the thing everyone has come to watch.
The lion still makes the entrance. Then my eye drops a little.