In the US Camera Annual of 1954, Carter Jones was selected to showcase a series of 8 photographs in rare pull-out section of the publication. This was a great honor and only a few photographers in the history of the annual had ever been given a similar opportunity. The series created while the artist lived in Paris is reproduced in its entirety below.
1 Every Sunday morning an old man stood with his cap out-stretched on a street corner opposite Carter Jones’ Paris flat. Jones, newly interested in photography, decided to record the encounter of beggar and passerby.
2 Propping his Rollei on an improvised support of books, Jones shot from a window 1/200 second, f/8 to keep the grillwork from losing definition. The grillwork adds to the sense of depth and the Sunday quietude.
3 The mood and scene having been established as in a movie, the main sequence begins. Unlike a movie, Jones cannot know what direction the action will take. He selects the dramatic moment from a mass of miscellany.
4 The nuns are too discreet to consult among themselves in from of the beggar, and turn the corner to count their change. The omniscient camera lets us see this scene although the old man is unaware of the situation.
5 Charity is given with no disregard for human dignity. “The photographer’s art”, says free-lancer Jones, “is an art of relationships. How much he says depends on how he sees” – and how much the viewer can feel.
6 The old man surveys the deserted street. “He looked surprised and a little bewildered,” the photographer noted, “as if wondering where his benefactors had disappeared to.” (Through the booth-like door in the wall.)
7 The day’s accounting. Jones, relentless, keeps shooting – not unselectively or for the sake of quantity but for as long as he sees something that moves him. For, above all, the photographer is “a creature of feeling.”
8 Finis. The photographer makes the simple concluding shot that ties the action together. All pictures made at noon. Two rolls of fast pan film were exposed with normal development and printing throughout sries.
