Chicken vs. Egg Again

Does being a good politician give one a good eye for people? Or does one have a good eye for people and winds up being a good politician? The same goes for photographers: which comes first, the sharp eye or the sharp skill?

While the newest exhibition at Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson doesn't answer the question,it does show how two great photographers and two great politicians can sometimes be only two men--with only two careers and four eyes between them.

I refer to retired U.S. Senator Howard Baker (R-Tenn) and the former Governor Ray Mabus (D-Miss). Both men, distinguished public servants, are also distinguished photographers, judging from their world travel photos now on exhibit.

Two friends and I attended the opening last night and were amazed at the quality of skill in dozens of color photos the two men surrendered for the exhibition.

Senator Baker's eye--say, for the old woman watching the street below from her second floor window in Rome, or for the gorgeously windblown, raven-haired, purple-eyed, purple-shawled Elizabeth Taylor shown at (maybe)the D.C. airport--reveals not only good timing, but also a keen sense of distance, line and composition.

In short, an artist a good politician-photographer may also be. See Senator Baker's superb close-up of a bump-skinned brown frog in a green-leafed brown pool for further proof of the man's eye for color, subject and composition. A stunner--for me, the most memorable photo in the exhibit.

Likewise, the still popular former Mississippi governor Ray Mabus has a great eye for color, subject and composition. His portrait style photos of Arab men and women seated in doorways or standing with their children in front of homes in Yemen and Afghanistan, or of colorfully draped women in Bhutan, or the powerfully lensed photos of animals in Africa, or of the Eiffel Tower amid millennial fireworks in Paris--all show Governor Mabus as a man of polished photography and applied people skills not only in Mississippi but wherever across the world he has traveled.

Long a fan of both politicians, I now admire them as photographers. The only disappointment was the storm that kept Senator Baker and his airplane grounded in Knoxville, thus preventing his planned appearance at the Jackson opening last night.

However, for us ladies who think we have a good eye, too, a handsome Ray Mabus in gray silk suit and well-coiffed silver hair helped ease the pain of the dapper, likable Senator Baker's absence.