Final Analysis
Roger Hicks considers… From ‘Blue Sky Set’, 2018, by Chris Connorton
Some pictures rely on impact. Others rely on colour. Yet others rely on composition. Some are purely emotional. Then there are those where the longer you look, the more you see. Very, very few pictures manage to combine all five, and more.
Although I’ve only seen this on a computer screen, I automatically ‘remember’ it as a huge, super-glossy print at one of the swankier galleries at Arles during the Rencontres. When I say huge, I mean 2x3m or more. This brings to mind a sixth attribute, sheer technical quality. For me, this picture is simultaneously reminiscent of both Gursky and CartierBresson, with the scale of the former and the human interest of the latter.
Obviously, blue and yellow are complementary colours, and a lot of the impact comes from this. But the realism and the gradations of the blue (including the cyan sea) stop it being too abstract; as does the figure. The positioning of the figure, and her relationship with the pale yellow rectangle of the wall, is exquisite; and then the blue of her top echoes the blue of the sky, which is reflected in her shiny black handbag.
Down to the last detail
This eases you into the other elements of the picture: the colour of her skin echoing the sand, the blue of what I take to be a walkway, her own blue shadow. The walkway frames her. You might complain that too much of the picture is too close to the left; but then you see how the horizontal component of the walkway echoes her recumbent form, sandwiching her in visual space. It’s hard to write this sort of thing without flirting with Private Eye’s Pseuds Corner, but if you’re going to write about a picture this good, it’s even harder to write any other way. The subject matter helps, of course: who can’t imagine themselves relaxing like this?
Back to the details. Most will be too small to see in reproduction here. Against that cyan band of sea there are a four tiny figures. Another reclines on the sand, in line with the end of the sea-leading walkway. There is a boat on the right. The detail is wonderful. This is what I mean about Gursky crossed with CartierBresson – a magnificent combination of the massive and the intimate.
It’s part of an all-too-small series of three taken at Playa de la Malvarrosa, Valencia. I’d love to see more. Yes, it might have been just luck; but this much luck suggests that he was building on quite a lot of talent as well.