A Glass Menagerie

Here is a photographic take on this famous play The Glass Menagerie: a four-character memory play by Tennessee Williams which originally went under the name of ‘The Gentleman Caller’. A Glass Menagerie is fragile and delicate. This fragility is manifested physically in the glass; “If you breathe, it breaks!”.  It’s also really beautiful –  of the translucent, other-worldly, delicate kind. Here is a snippet from the play…

“Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”

This is somewhat like the craft of Photography.  Photography, as we know, is not real at all. It is an illusion of reality with which the Photographer creates his own private world. Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces. Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live.

This image was executed during an event which we covered in Northern California. During an After-Party, we arrived a bit early to scope the scene and were drawn to the stacks of wine glasses being readied for the oncoming, thirsty hordes. Being Photographers, we tend to gravitate to glass (for some reason), and gazing through the stacks we were captured by the (seemingly) endless lines and rows.