William Ropp

„When I began photographing children a few years ago, I never imagined
that I would still be doing so to this day.
 From the very first sittings, I decided to approach portrait sessions
with children in the same manner as I worked with my usual adult
models- with my camera firmly fixed to a tripod, and in absolute
darkness.
Then, leaving my subjects to themselves, I ask nothing more of them
than that they not move too much. And so begins what some might call
the "dance of light", a sort of divine rite, a primitive calling forth
of the God Photon - with a little help from my more than fifty-year old
Czech-made flashlight.
I have never suggested to a child ( nor has it ever been necessary to
do so) that he or she express any particular feeling. The protective
cocoon of darkness protects the child, like the seeker of gold being
led to the bottom of the mine, to plunge deeply within him or herself,
and to produce, ineluctably, these face we see, these faces marked with
such gravity.
The miracle we can perceive in some of these portraits grow out of the
rich internal life of the children themselves, beginning their journey
in life, and gazing, like Narcissus, into the double mirror of their
delightful souls.
If my vision of childhood is disturbing to some viewers it is surely
because it represents the exact opposite of what they would like to
see: The spectacle of the carefree invulnerability of childhood,
complete with a parade of reassuring smiles - the soothing image of the
affable little creature disconnected from the malevolent adult world.
If I had to frame my own childhood in one single picture, I would say,
without the slightest hesitation, that this image would be full of
seriousness; it would be as serious as the future full of hopes and
doubts, fears and questions, that I sensed looming toward me from off
in the distance.
The typical ambivalence in reaction to my work can be summed up in an
anecdote about the photograph of the little girl leaning on her
father's arm.
At an exhibition an older man approached me to offer his
congratulations " I like your view of childhood very much" he told me.
(Compliments and insults alike make me uncomfortable; I never know by
what clever turn I might be able to escape from them. Generally, I
respond with a silly remark along the lines of " I'm fond of your tie,
too. But one day, in response to such a comment, someone mailed me an
impossible shirt with yellow dots....)
The gentleman continued: "Still to me, the image of the face of the
child leaning against the arm is extremely distressing."
His remark left me speechless. At the end of the sitting, the little
girl had confided to me that she had felt very happy and very safe,
letting herself relax against her father's protective arm.
When everything has been hashed and rehashed, when concepts, the
assassins of mystery, have spewed out preemptive definitions, the
viewer is left with nothing but unspeakable boredom.
It is the dichotomies among the feelings of the model, the intentions
of the artist and the perception of the viewer - it is this very
ambivalence that forms, in my opinion, the essence and the richness of
Art.