The Image: Mike Peters, Man with hands behind back at the Easter Parade, NYC, 2010

© Mike Peters, Man with hands behind back at the Easter Parade, NYC, 2010

This was taken at the Easter Parade on 5th Avenue in New York City in 2010. I had never been to this event before.

Immediately before making this photo, I had been speaking with Mary Ellen Mark who shoots here every year. We lamented the state of the business and congratulated each other for continuing to use film. My photograph of her on Flickr continues to get looked at every day here.

Like the Halloween and Mermaid parades in NYC, this is generally an event where people get decked out in something outrageous so they can be the center of attention for a little while. And, like most parades, I found those people who wanted to be photographed, the least interesting.

So, not being at all interested in the people wearing the outrageous costumes and posing for all of the other photographers, I did what I always prefer to do, which is to troll the periphery. And, within about 2 minutes of concluding my conversation with Mary Ellen, this gentleman, whom I had seen from a distance earlier strolling by, was stopped and looking at someone to his left. As I raised the camera he turned to look at me.

His posture and the forward jut of his chin fascinated me, as did his hat and glasses. The hands clasped behind the back, as they had been earlier, left him open to the world as it was unfolding in front of him. He struck me as a man from another time, an earlier New York City that seemed to be a haven for men who looked like this. His chin held high, his hat crumpled just so, his mustache and even his pants so high up on his waist seemed to describe a real character to me.

But it's his glasses which shroud his gaze a bit, but not too much, that intrigue me the most. They hint at what I imagine to be a deep reserve in which he holds himself back. In short, this man seemed very dignified and real to me, unlike the posers waiting for a crowd of gawkers. To me he is a man onto which I could graft any number of imagined stories. He was here to see the spectacle just as I was, and in that, we were the same, and in his steady gaze I saw myself.

f100: Mike Peters, Verner Soler, Andrew Buurman, Elaine Duigenan

© Mike Peters, from the series "Life"

fototazo has asked a group of 50 curators, gallery owners, blog writers, photographers, academics and others actively engaged in photography to pick two photographers that deserve (more) recognition - the underknown, the under-respected as well as not-appreciated-enough favorites. A little more information on the project is available in the first post in the series here.

We began the series with responses from Nicholas Nixon, Matt Johnston, Blake Andrews and John Edwin Mason. Today we continue with responses from Aline Smithson and Colin Pantall.

Respondent: Aline Smithson is a photographer, editor, writer and educator. Her work has been featured in numerous publications and exhibited widely. She has been the Gallery Editor for Light Leaks Magazine, writes and edits the blog Lenscratch and has been curating exhibitions for a number of galleries and online magazines.

Selections: Mike Peters and Verner Soler

© Verner Soler, from the series "Village Landscapes"

Respondent: Colin Pantall is a photographer and writer based in Bath, England.

Selections: Andrew Buurman and Elaine Duigenan

©Andrew Buurman, from the series "The Serpentine Swimming Club"

Andrew Buurman is a straightforward documentary/photojournalist who produces projects that somehow stick with me. I always remember his Serpentine swimmers and his Allotments book is a low-key classic that just grows on me with time. The more I look at the pictures, the more I see in them and the richer the whole book becomes. I also love the fact that for his wank rooms project, he sent used tissue (or was it just crumpled tissue - a big difference) to people in the photo-world to promote the work.

Elaine Duigenan's scanograms have a charm and elegance that makes the homely into monuments of domestic beauty. Her "Nylons and Nets" projects are scans of vintage stockings and hairnets, fragile objects that become almost organic creatures at the hands of Duigenan. "Micro Mundi" is a series of pictures of snail trails, traces of a chronology of existence that is chaotic but recognizable, a world apart but not quite separate.

© Elaine Duigenan, Taille Unique