Grey behind the lens

I was caught today by the lovely images in the New York Times "Lens" blog essay on the photographer Grey Villet. There's such magic to the role of perspective in life. It's so utterly wonderful that we can capture our literal perspective with a camera.

In particular, the image of Grey and his wife Barbara is simply beautiful, caught in a moment of laughter, in the intimacy of a shared life, looking at someone or something beyond the photo's frame.

In my own albums and pictures, I love seeing the way that the people in the photo look at the person taking the picture. I see my mother smiling right at me in the photos I've taken of her, and I see myself looking at my father with love that's his alone in the photos he's taken of me. It's a dialogue, because only the person taking the photo could possibly see the photographed people that particular way, and in the gaze of the subject, you learn something about the way they see the person behind the camera.