Talking Pictures

When Nathan Crowder shows his work at the Tennessee Art League’s monthly gallery show in downtown Nashville, he favors the maximum effect of displaying a few large images rather than, say, ten 8x10s. Not too long ago, this photo got an especially strong, emotional, and gratifying reaction.

“These are my grandfather’s hands,” Nathan says. “He’d worked all his life as a farmer and a mechanic, and I like the idea of an image that represents a person rather than a traditional portrait of the person.”

At the gallery one evening this past January, Nathan noticed a couple standing in front of the photo. “I usually stand at a distance to my photographs so I can see what people react to, and often I’ll come up to them and talk with them. When I came up to this couple, the wife told me that the photograph brought back a lot of good memories of her father, who, like my grandfather, was a hard worker. She said that the photo represented a person’s lifetime. She gave me such a beautiful smile as she told me how much my photograph affected her. A reaction like that is priceless, and it really made me feel like I’m doing something right, because I believe art has a higher call than just something to make money on.”

You can view a variety of Nathan Crowder’s images at his website, www.nathancrowderphotography.com.