Wow, Huw. This really is an exceptional image. I was immediately drawn into by the natural light and shadows in the scene but also the colors. They are exceptional? That you simply just walked into this scene and it was just happenstance makes this even more remarkable. It appears that she never even saw you.
I think you were ready for, if not actually looking for, an image like this because of your recent musings about Hopper, Vermeer, Kertesz, so when you entered this cafe, everything struck you immediately. The colors, the light, and of course the girl reading the book.
What’s really is amazing is the light hitting the girls face, hands and of course that book. You can tell she’s deeply into whatever she’s reading. And, you’re right about the shopping cart being part of the story and it certainly doesn’t detract at all.
I have to say that I really like the larger version you’ve shared here. I love the ceiling lamp, the green vertical lines of the windows, the red colors coming through the windows, the little hand painted flowers on the wall above the picture, the height of the ceiling and more of the coffee shop. I don’t get the same feel in the smaller cropped version. I don’t get the same sense of location and I’m missing some of those greens from the windows and the red from the bricks. In the smaller version the red looks like paint on a wall and not a reflection of the bricks from across the way through a window.
The smaller version is however, much more intimate and it really paints the picture of the woman in deep thought reading a book but it could be in her kitchen at home. They are both beautifully presented and had you not shown the larger version I would be completely smitten over the cropped version but you did show me the larger version and I do prefer it. Sensational either way and I can see how this is one of your favorite images.
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