By Max Goldfinger, c. 1955.    Graceland

After gathering  family movie clips from a collection of 8 mm travel and family films, I was  able to convert the movies to DVD’s.  My late father Max Goldfinger took all the videos.

So while looking through one of those reels on my computer,  I saw this.  I was surprised, so I chose it for my still life collection  (see below.)

Dad never showed any interest in art except for music. We never went to a museum or talked about visual arts, except when his small movie boxes came in the mail.

But I liked this still life by a movie maker who never kept his camera still.  Where was it taken?   Why did he dwell on this?  I have no idea, but maybe it gives me a bit of insight into a side of him that I did not know.

I guess everyone has at least one work of art to produce during their life.  In photography anyone can make one first rate fine-art image.

How did I do it?  I paused a frame from a family DVD I was reviewing on the computer.   Then I photographed it with a high end digital camera.  The captured image was sent over to the Apple photos software. And then it was exported to my desktop for use on my blogs.

Some of you might wonder why I pair music to still photography.  They enhance each other, but the viewer  may be challenged to connect the dots.

However, as in poetry or other art forms, the viewer can bring their own interpretations to the experience.

It is no different to when music is played during movies. That practice goes back to the silent movie era, and these 8 mm clips are, in fact, silent movies as in the days of Charlie Chaplin where a pianist or organist performed in the pit while the movie was shown.  It’s always made sense, but the use with still photography and modern digital music performances is my original idea.

Paul Goldfinger, MD,   Editor TropicanaForum.com

PAUL SIMON:   from the album Graceland