Richard Gess
I like photographing the crowds at big public events. That's partly because it's easy to work without feeling too invasive; everyone else is taking pictures, too. The larger reason is that parades, festivals, sports events and parties are all places where I feel isolated. In the middle of crowds I feel quite alone. What I see seems to be going on without me. From my distance, I can proceed to make up my own version of things, independent of the ostensible occasion: I can invent an opposite mood, or reduce the scene to shapes. The occasion, in any case, usually seems unreadable to me, a script in another language.
