The Color of Light

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Six girls walk down the sidewalk away from the camera, seemingly unaware anyone is watching them. Foreshortened by the telephoto lens of the old Super 8 that captures them, weighted down by backpacks and school projects, they seem like spindly giants as they move through long morning shadows. They are ten and eleven years old, still coltish-leggy, hipless, breastless-apparently confident about their place in the small universe encompassed within this comfortable, leafy neighborhood.

A skinny girl wearing stovepipe blue jeans and red high-top sneakers, walking near the front of the pack, seems to be the primary target of the lens. The resolute set to her shoulders, head held high, suggests that she and her cohort are on a mission.

The camera’s wide field of vision places the girls within the usual dance of morning along the narrow tree-lined street: a car backs out of a driveway, a gardener mows a lawn, a dog chases a squirrel, a deliveryman drives his route. Now and then branches obscure the shot as the cameraman pans to one side or the other with some apparent interest in stands of shrubbery or garden walls; potential hiding places? Clearly, it is the progress of the girls that draws him.

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