Photo Greatness

Petit's Mobil Station by George Tice

Due to an unreasonably huge email backlog, I missed the boat on replying to Jörg's request to contribute to his very awesome What Makes a Great Photo? post. I figured I'd respond here, because it's a question I think about a lot, and it's an opportunity for me to post the George Tice photo I've been obsessing about since I was out at PhotoLA.

There is some irony in the fact that it's a gas station photo that's caught my fancy. Gas stations are the stuff that cliches are made of. And yet, I can think of three that I love a lot right off the top of my head: Tice's, Alec's Cemetery, Fountain City, WI and Tema Stauffer's Gas Station.

My criteria for greatness are pretty simple:

- I can't stop thinking about it.
- It makes me want to tell a story.

I always feel like a show at the gallery is successful when people who come through start telling me stories about what's going on in the photos. Obviously, that's a very specific type of photo, but it's the type I love best.

Comments

[tim atherton]

Nice article about Tice (and a big repro of that picture) in the latest Focus Mag

http://photo-muse.blogspot.com/2007/03/john-szarkowski-and-george-tice.html

[Jen Bekman]

Thanks for the tip Tim!

[Nelson Chan]

I spent time with Tice at his house in NJ while he was teaching me printing skills as well as critiquing my work. The day before I arrived, he was printing a 16"x20" of "Petit's". Eccentric man. I'm not sure if you know the story behind the title of this photo, but Tice ran into the store and asked the man what is name was. He mistook the store clerk (Petit) as the owner. I find that, that little back story contributes to the beauty of the photograph. In this photograph, Petit is the man. Much respect.

[Mark Hillringhouse]

I was happy to see some comments here on Tice's Petit's Mobil Station. I know George pretty well now having interviewed him and written about him and having gone out with him to help him with his last Paterson II book. I wrote a feature on him for the November 2006 View Camera. I am in the middle of a long essay over four thousand words on Petit's Mobil Station. I was even able to contact the former owner of the station, Fred Pettit (George got the spelling wrong). All this started as a meditation on the photograph, what it meant to me and how I related to it over the years and what it symbolizes as a psychic portrait of our times.

For the last part of my essay, I plan on driving down to photograph the station myself and to walk into the space. It is a Lukoil station now. The water tower was painted white.

It has been a long, interesting journey with one of America's great photographs.

Mark