Voxpop #1: “In a Child’s Eye”
Presented by M. Solav ／ Concept by Laura Galinier
Voxpop are experiments in which abstract photographers of the Hintology community either engage their work with specific social groups or come to discuss particular topics related to their practice.
For this first edition, we have invited nine artists who are also parents to share one of their work with one another’s child or children, and asked them to gather their testimonies and observations. The pictures are as follow:
Before presenting their words, we’d like to thank all the participants for taking some of their time to partake in this experiment with their pictures and their children:
Ajit Photo @ajitphoto with his son Satvik (8);
Amanda @zjrk3 with her triplets Reed, Jack and Zuri (4);
Jasmin Javon @j.javon.photography with her son Roman (4);
Laura Galinier @tempobleu with her son Auréan (7);
Lesley Clifford @con_textural_ise with her daughter Ellie (11);
Melissa Graham @melissagraham1074 with her sons Alex (12) and Max (8);
Paul Rowland @pauljonathanrowland with his son Rei David (6);
Rafael Bucio @danceswithbulbs with his son Lorenzo (9);
Yann Girault @gaia.project.photography with Hugo (8) and Antoine (11).
Here are their testimonies for every given image; at the very least, they are a glimpse of what can be seen through a child’s eyes, allowing us to view abstract art with greater innocence, and thus, perhaps, greater sincerity:
Satvik (8): “Oooh scary! What is that? I think it’s a shark.”
Rei David (6): “Spaceship… a boat, a big one, made out of robot metal. Maybe an alien spaceship. It’s in the sea, or a lake, but I don’t know where it is going.”
Lorenzo (9): “I think it’s some kind of artwork made of water, looks like a small ship, like it was crystalized or frozen. The ship turned into water and it is becoming part of the sea and its soul is vanishing. [There are people on the ship and they are] screaming and running amok. It’s like watching a landscape; tranquility. It’s a nice image.”
Roman (4): “I don’t know… a stegasauraus?”
Ellie (11): “A little iceboat on the ocean with ice leaves.”
Alex (12): “A glacier or frozen boat.”
Max (8): “A turtle or a ship.”
Savtik (8): “Reflection of ice.”
Hugo (8): “It looks like a boat, made in glass, floating on water.”
Antoine (11): “I think that’s a boat… a boat floatin on water with its reflection in the sea.”
Rei David (6): “Monster’s eyeball. It’s black but there’s a little bit of blue. It’s looking at my soft toy. I feel scared.”
Lorenzo (9): “It’s like being inside a portal or wormhole or black hole. [I feel] fear and curiosity. Because I don´t know where it would take me or what would happen to me.”
Roman (4): “It looks just like butterfly wings!”
Ellie (11): “Butterfly pattern cloth.”
Alex (12): “Stripes or a lady bug.”
Max (8): “A power core or the moon rising.”
Zach (8): “A butterfly.”
Savtik (8): “This is a butterfly flapping it’s wings.”
Hugo (8): “It looks like an eye, and the two kind of bumbs are two fingers that were pleaced nex to the eye. Their nails are in blue.”
Antoine (11): “I’m not too sure… I’m thinking about a computer bug.”
Auréan (7): “An eye and droplets; big droplets, or maybe ice… a mountain, rather.”
Lorenzo (9): “It’s like a bowl of rice. Like a bowl where the rice is floating and it’s nighttime and there’s like parasites or plankton. [It makes me feel] gisgusted, because of the parasites.”
Roman (4): “Ummmm… It looks like a round circle with rice in it?”
Ellie (11): “A window on a boat with foam on from the sea.”
Max (8): “Chilli and bubbles.”
Zach (8): “Lights, or rice.”
Savtik (8): “Popcorn cooking in a pan.”
Hugo (8): “A receptacle… with a lot of paint on it. To be honest, it looks like an eye. It’s as if we’ve zoomed on the face of a giant; the circle is the eye and around is the skin.”
Antoine (11): “Here I get the impression of seeing a saucepan in which coconut is being grilled.”
Auréan (7): “It makes me think about yogourt that’s been spread on a plate.”
Reed (4): “Good! It makes me think that I really want to eat dessert! Looks like dirt pudding.”
Roman (4): “That’s almost like blue water!”
Ellie (11): “A reflection of a boy ducking down.”
Alex (12): “Air bender from avatar in a building in a city.”
Max (8): “Someone in a stadium.”
Zach (8): “Someone running outside.”
Savtik (8): “Someone running very fast.”
Hugo (8): “That looks like a picture of a person who walks but has been erased. I think it’s dark… no, not dark… but it’s, I don’t know — someone who walks.”
Antoine (11): “Here I feel like I’m seeing a flower. There’s the stem and the petals below. The lines above are hard to describe. The bottom looks like a flower, and the upper part reminds me of an oil spill.”
Auréan (7): “It looks like… hair. There, hair curling all around, with a robe or a dress and some legs. Yes, it looks like someone dancing, but we can’t see their head. And there’s the sky, but it’s not blue.”
Reed (4): “Creepy! It seems like black stuff in the air and it looks like a monster! Something that’s villains.”
Rei David (6): “Olympic Stadium. These are maybe seats. There are some people at the bottom. I can see dogs. Legs! Swimming. One person running away from a dog. I can see pine-green and water-blue and white and dark red.”
Ellie (11): “A fish fin.”
Alex (12): “Volleyball in water.”
Max (8): “Marvels or crystalists.”
Zach (8): “An alien face.”
Savtik (8): “This is a glass bottle containing coloured water.”
Hugo (8): “That looks like water — sparkling water, because there are bubbles. And the thing is that there’s a waterdrop that is pouring itself in the other water. There’s a glass that’s flat, and a droplet came out to dive into the other water. It’s as if there was a wave in the glass — a really tiny wave.”
Antoine (11): “Nothing comes to mind here… I can see water with many bubbles inside. I also see a fish whose head sticks out.”
Auréan (7): “A giant big ball with a beautiful leaf; and bubbles beside. What else? It also makes me think about a giant droplet or a giant bubble.”
Reed (4): “That looks beautiful! It looks like a little fish.”
Rei David (6): “Water, in water… a ball under water — somebody kicked it. It’s by the sea. It looks like a blue and green boulder. It makes me feel happy.”
Lorenzo (9): “It´s like a tsunami or a wave. I like the colors and the forms. [It makes me feel] like, I don’t know, like I want to be there, it makes me feel calmed, like watching a sunset.”
Alex (12): “Someone threw their lunch on the roof at school and broke the panels in the ceiling.”
Zach (8): “Drawing on a wall.”
Savtik (8): “A broken tile with someone’s hand print.”
Hugo (8): “That one is like a board game that’s been zoomed-in — there’s a zoom on the tiles, and there’s something really strange that fell on the board… pigeon poop or something!”
Antoine (11): “What I’m going to say might sound a bit absurd… but it makes me think of a zebra, with its colors…”
Auréan (7): “A broken wall… or a floor tile, rather, with a spot colored in red.”
Reed (4): “A seashell on the beach.”
Rei David (6): “Somebody put a sticker on a wall, and some tape. White.”
Lorenzo (9): “It looks like there are some paint buckets. Like they are coming to paint this house. [I don’t like it], but don’t dislike it either. But I feel curious of what’s around there, how it would look like after it’s done.”
Roman (4): “That’s like a puzzle! Like the vision from Encanto! The green one!”
Savtik (8): “This looks like a pink crystal which is blurred.”
Hugo (8): “Looks like diamond stalactites, I mean a pink gemstone. Or white and pink mountains.”
Antoine (11): “Here it seems like we’re zooming on the petals of a flower.”
Auréan (7): “A picture of a blurred flower… yes, pink flowers, that’s it! A pink flower, either seen from close or blurred.”
Reed (4): “It’s beautiful! Like a pink flower.”
Rei David (6): “Reddish purple. Inside a watermelon. Ice-cream… Strawberry sauce on shaved ice.”
Lorenzo (9): “Well…I see two things. It’s like waves in a calm sea like, like when you’re on a boat in the open sea. An also it looks like a jellyfish, there’s its head and its tentacles when it’s leaving, or maybe a squid.”
Roman (4): “That’s owl wing wind from PJ Masks!”
Ellie (11): “Red seaweed.”
Hugo (8): “That reminds me of bubbles in a glass of water. It’s strange, but funny.”
Antoine (11): “That reminds me of a ‘pop-it’. That’s a thing with which you have press on bubbles… it’s a game for kids.”
Auréan (7): “Bubbles of every colors within a jar. And there seems to be an egg and a leaf.”
Reed (4): “It’s so colorful! Like popping bubbles.”
Rei David (6): “Rainbow money. Marbles. Round jelly. Grape flavour, lemon, orange, water… Crayon Shin-chan’s bum pudding [a Japanese manga character famous for his wiggling his bum!]”
Lorenzo (9): “It’s like a wall of mirrors and paint buckets in a room or a house with no exit. [I am curious] to see how it is like to be there.”
Roman (4): “Those are water beads! All different colors.. I like them!”
Ellie (11): “Orbeez in a glass box.”
Alex (12): “Bubbles left at the end of a drink in a glass cup and someone coloured the bubbles.”
Max (8): “Water balloons.”
Zach (8): “Bubbles in water.”
Auréan (7): “That reminds me a bit of a bee, and there’s a waterfall colored in yellow as well as a funny face drawn on the bee — you can see its eyes, nose and mouth. And the bee is trying to cross the waterfall.”
Rei David (6): “Goldfish scales. Somebody chopped an egg really small. Gold. Golden ticket. Augustus Gloop ate it and it broke into small pieces! Now it’s in the chocolate river.”
Lorenzo (9): “It’s like warriors on jumping high in the air that are about to attack somebody. (pointing) This one, this one and this one are the warriors.”
Roman (4): “That looks like it’s under the sea.. like under water… mermaids are under water, too.”
Ellie (11): “Lichen on water.”
Alex (12): “Waterfall at sunrise or shining light on a waterfall.”
Max (8): “A meteoroid.”
Satvik (8): “This looks like the surface of mars or volcanic lava.”
We hope you had fun seeing these images through the eyes of the children who volunteered for this experiment, and that you could marvel at their often abundant imagination. If anything, their testimonies here remind us that art — and especially abstract art — is something to be approached with an open and almost naive mindset, as it ultimately is a gateway to our own thoughts, to our inner world, and an opportunity to meet once more with the child that still lives within each of us.
Voxpop produced by M. Solav.
Original concept by Laura Galinier.
Thanks again to all the participants:
Ajit Photo @ajitphoto with his son Satvik (8);
Amanda @zjrk3 with her triplets Reed, Jack and Zuri (4);
Jasmin Javon @j.javon.photography with her son Roman (4);
Laura Galinier @tempobleu with her son Auréan (7);
Lesley Clifford @con_textural_ise with her daughter Ellie (11);
Melissa Graham @melissagraham1074 with her sons Alex (12) and Max (8);
Paul Rowland @pauljonathanrowland with his son Rei David (6);
Rafael Bucio @danceswithbulbs with his son Lorenzo (9);
Yann Girault @gaia.project.photography with Hugo (8) and Antoine (11).
…about Hintology
Hintology is an abstract photography magazine project created in August 2020 which strives to create a community where every artists are given a chance to broadcast their voice, the aspiring just as much as the established. We are a small team of volunteers who rely on the passion and contributions of their community to help spread the beauty and diversity of abstract photography. If you share our vision of inclusiveness and inquisitiveness, you can make a difference by tagging your work with #Hintology on Instagram, or by following our page and joining our group on Facebook. If you appreciate our curative work and the interviews we conduct, please do consider donating via this link; all funds will go towards printing the first physical edition of the magazine.
Visit Hintology.org for all the links.
