Thursday Entry: Transience

"Don't let me disappear"
-J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye

Cruz, A. (2003) "Afterword".
Don't Let Me Disappear, 80-81.

Amanda Cruz considers artist Slater Bradley's series, don't let me disappear an intimate look at the young artist's relationships, his vulnerability, and the fleetingness of life. This series, which includes photographs taken from 1997 to 2003 features several key motifs including hot-air balloons, beached whales, and butterfly catchers. The beached whales are shot in the same warm, romantic light as the rising balloons, and stand at opposite ends of the spectrum from eachother. While both suggest transient moments, the whales' remaining hours of life and the balloon's inflation, one is a sign of defeat and the other triumph. Cruz notes Bradley's comparison of the dying whales to Icarus, who ventured too far and was felled by the sun. Vulnerability and precariousness are shown in the artist's self portraits. In both of the images of himself, he is in hospital garb, shown after a procedure to correct his breathing; he too is fragile and alone. The rest of the images in his series are of personal relationships. The photos of friends and love interests are imbued with the same feeling of transience when grouped along with the aforementioned work. Smiling eyes meet the camera lens, but will soon look away.
Hopefully, that same sense of impermanence lingers in the series I am creating. People are caught in transition from ignorance to knowledge as they begin to react to what is around them. Their gestures, as well as their opinions, are not fully formed. Bradley's photos of dying whales are macabre and beautiful for similar reasons. Bystanders collect around the beached whales but are unable to assist; they just watch the mammals' last moments pass.

Sunday Entry: Anne Hardy

British artist Anne Hardy constructs fantastic environments before her camera in her studio. She was born in 1970 in the UK and received her MA in 2000 from The Royal College of Art. Unlike most artists, who endeavor to find unusual places to photograph, Hardy starts from scratch and builds her own surreal interiors, with full knowledge of how she wants to shoot them. For the artist, the process begins after she finds an object that inspires her; she then starts from scratch and builds a room within her studio that would accommodate said object. In many images, her constructed environs are cluttered in an obsessive manner. There are groupings of similar objects and bizarre numbers placed within the room, in an attempt to catalog its trappings. The viewer is left to image who inhabits these spaces, and can construct narratives with the clues Hardy has left in the rooms. These large scale tableaux are notable for never containing the people who inhabit these spaces; the scenes are left, ready for their eccentric owner's return.
Of the tableaux I've seen, I am particularly fascinated by the one titled, "Drift". Perhaps it's all my experience with creating and destroying leaf piles in my youth, but her image of a command center buried within a great drift of leaves sets my mind spinning. The lighting in the scene is provided by, in the context of the image, the sun above the leaves. This scene triggers a host of bizarre stories about the necessity for such a room or who would be obligated to station it. It is this sense of mystery that has kept me making photographs, always trying to exercise the viewer's dedication and imagination.



http://www.anne-hardy.co.uk

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/anne_hardy.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2007/jan/11/photography.architecture

Lecture Entry: Professor Babatunde Lawal

VCU Art History Professor Babatunde Lawal gave an informative lecture on the Kente fabrics belonging to the Ashante people of Ghana. In his lecture, which occurred this week at the University of Richmond, he exposed the link between clothing and language, by means of iconographic patterns and colors. Lawal noted the importance of the body and its clothing in terms of culture and class. Iconographic images woven into clothing show occupation, status, wealth, power, and even stories. The patterns and colors featured in Kente fabrics can be readily interpreted by the Ashante. Unlike the Ewe people in Ghana, who use cool colors in their clothing, the Ashante employ bold, dramatic colors and patterns. Within their patterns, hands represent friendship, stools represent repose, elephants stand for nobility, and zigzags signify the energy of life, as well as the unpredictable elements found in life. The fish head motif recalls an ancient Ashante adage, "a wise person will grab a fish by the head, only a stupid person will grab it by the tail and let it slip". As with every culture, the Ashante has a set of associations to accompany the colors in their clothing: white is purity, black represents power, obscurity, and secrecy, red is for blood and vitality, yellow is for ripeness, green signifies clairvoyance and healing, and blue is for water.
I am alway interested in the different meanings attached to colors. I had no idea about the significance of every element featured in this culture's dress. Marcus Garvey, the leader of the Back to Africa movement in the early twentieth century, adopted the Kente fabrics as his own and wore bold, commanding colors such as black, red, and green. Golden stool patterns, which I had seen before on graduation stoles, are sacred to the Ashante; they represent repose and are prominent in funerary rites. Professor Lawal talked about Kente's importance in America today thanks to the Civil Rights movement in the fifties and sixties. Muhammad Ali championed the Ashante's designs after he visited Ghana during his prime.

Thursday Entry: Gesture

"Gesture, or a visual communication using physical material, can be an autonomous language,a supplement to various other languages, or a medium"
-Lia Markey
The University of Chicago

Dykstra, J. (2006) "Eyes Wide Open".
Angela Strassheim Left Behind, 1-2.

Critic Jean Dykstra's essay looks at the intricate gestures and glances that Angela Strassheim's photography depends on. The author selects a sample of the artist's work from her series "Left Behind", and analyzes it with particular attention to posture and the photographer's youth. One striking example of effective body language is in the image Untitled (McDonald's). In the picture, a young family is seated at the fast-food restaurant, with their hands linked in prayer. The image is interrupted by one of the girls in the family; her's is the only head unbowed. By raising her head and looking in the opposite direction, the teenage girl's gesture suggests dissension and becomes the focus of the photo. A simple adjustment of posture in an image, such as in this tableau, can lead the viewer in numerous directions. Dykstra cites another instance of the importance of gesture in a photograph of a father and son before a bathroom mirror. The father combs the young boy's hair and links eyes with him through the mirror. A great deal of significance is placed upon the gesture of the father's free hand. Placed upon the boy's shoulder, it is both firm and gentle; it shows authority and love at the same time. Their relationship could be inferred by the simple placement of the father's hand.
My current series of photos also depends on gesture. In these tableaux, an event has just occurred and people gather around as witnesses. Their gestures are crucial because they should look spontaneous and unresolved. The body language should mirror the spectators' lack of information and their curiosity.

Sunday Entry: Elspeth Diederix

Conceptual artist Elspeth Diederix is Dutch, yet was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1971. Diederix and her family moved often, living in Africa, Columbia, and the Netherlands because her father worked for the Dutch embassy. She graduated in 1995 from Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and was awarded the Prix de Rome in 2002. Her interest in photography was a result of being exposed to such amazingly disparate landscapes as a child and her interest in art history and painting. Her photographs are infiltrated with elements of the fantastic. In an image titled Virginia, a woman submerges her face into a duckweed covered pond; her simple, yet bizarre action reminds viewers of a traveler's entrance into a new, unknown world. Unsettling events occur in common surroundings. Diederix plays with strange effects of light and shape in her work, yet uses no digital manipulation. The artist often resorts to suspending objects from clear fishing line to create different environments.
I first came across Elspeth Diederix's work when looking at a collection of the Prix de Rome winner's artwork. I was immediately taken aback by an image of a woman dipping her fingers into a cup of coffee at a cafe. The woman's nonchalance is unsettling; her face and body posture suggest that nothing out of the ordinary is occurring. If might just be that she is fishing a spent bag of tea out of her cup, but the image set my imagination aglow. The same sense of the fantastic is alive in all of her photos. I appreciate her work all the more knowing that she creates all of the effects in camera. I always try to stage everything exactly before the camera so that those posing in the composition have a sense of the atmosphere of the completed image.




http://www.betterwall.com/bnr.php?bid=102

http://www.elspethdiederix.com/

http://cms.dordrecht.nl/dordt?nav=inedmEsHaKpPkCdCaGDzHGRI

Lecture Entry: Simen Johan

Norwegian photographer Simen Johan began working with digital technology at the time of its inception. In his early series "And Nothing Was to Be Trusted" Johan made digital composites of found images in black and white. The monochromatic palette helped mask the problems with the burgeoning technology. This series featured unsupervised children in precarious positions, and touched upon the themes of oppression, emergent sexuality, and masculine identity. His artwork evolved dramatically over the years, and his second series, "Evidence of Things Unseen" found the artist taking his own images and working with color. With this work, Johan focused on the relationship between childhood activities and ritual practices. In addition to making digital composites, he began staging scenes and creating all of the elements in camera. One particular image shows a naked young girl at the beach. Her sand covered body is crouching in the middle of a ring of cigarette butts, which she lays out as if for protection. In 2004, Johan began working on "Until the Kingdom Comes", a series of photographs depicting animals in various environments. Animals, both dead and alive, frequent these scenes, which are inspired by the compositions of famous paintings.
For as intriguing as some of his images were, I found Simen Johan very inarticulate about his work.I wanted to hear more about the conceptual thinking process behind the series, instead of just the digital manipulations. He jumped from one image to the next without really explaining his intent in the images; the audience could clearly see what elements were in the images already, but we needed more insight into his thought process. In prior lectures, the artists have been enthusiastic and eloquent about their ideas, willing to confide in the audience about influences and content.

Thursday Entry: Atmosphere

"the color red attracts and repels. Red is always mesmerizing "
-Anne Varichon

Elms, A. (2005) "Then it's time to unsimplify you...".
Carl Michael Von Hausswolff: Red Empty(Chicago 2003), 1-5.


Anthony Elms' article clarifies Von Hausswolff's series Red Empty (Chicago 2003) and likens it to the film High Plains Drifter. The artist's palette of deep black shadows and saturated reds greatly adds tension to urban structures that would ordinarily go unnoticed. The buildings in this series are classified as in-betweens: "currently negative space, they are not quite ruins". Each structure, whether it be a church or a decaying house, has been highlighted for a particular reason in deep red. The eye is drawn in to these spaces, and the bold, primal color imposes many associations on to the buildings. Red's associations are myriad, and the viewer is given the opportunity to construct narratives with each image. Elms compares this series to the plot of Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter, in that the titular character forces the population of a western town to literally paint all the buildings red, in order to expose corruption and sordid activities. In this way, the townspeople can all share in the guilt, and depravity that leaves no one clean.
Rarely have I seen a series in which each image shares the same atmosphere and tension. Von Hausswolff's sustained sense of drama and unease is something to marvel at. Elms was correct in pointing out the effectiveness of the color red; it is never subtle and can be interpreted in so many different ways. The artist's skillful creation and perpetuation of the sense of atmosphere is something I look to improve on with my own photographs.

Sunday Entry: Erwin Wurm

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/2007/01/erwin_wurm_at_cristina_guerra_1

http://www.kopenhagen.dk/interviews/interviews/interview_erwin_wurm/


http://www.galerie-krinzinger.at/kuenstler/wurm/wurm_ar_fr.html

Conceptual artist Erwin Wurm was born in Bruck, Austria in 1954. He came from an artistically diverse background, which saw him experiment with painting, performance art, sculpture, and photography. In his more recent work, Wurm has been critiquing the self-satisfied nature of society. He is well known for his bloated sculptures of suburban houses and vehicles. In addition to social critique, Wurm has commented on the art world by making sculptures in which famous art galleries, such as New York's Guggenheim, in a state of deflation. The galleries, like the houses and cars before, have become soft and flabby with complacency. The artist often presents photographic prints of his performance art, believing the photographs themselves to be sculptures. In an especially intriguing series, entitled Instructions on how to be politically incorrect, Wurm photographed people in socially unacceptable situations. In one image, a woman leans in and spits in another woman's cup of tea, while looking at the lens. In the same vein, another image in the series depicts a man with his head buried in a woman's sweater. Wurm's humor can be seen throughout his work.
Erwin Wurm's photographs have a distinctly absurd flavor to them that demand all of the viewer's attention.The images are slyly staged, yet have a real sense of spontaneity to them. I love the mysterious qualities of Wurm's photos; each one leads the viewer in multiple directions.

Thursday Entry: Composition

" The sensitive eye of artist and viewer tests every picture for balance, a judgment usually rendered naturally by everyone, with or without knowledge of artistic laws"
-Henry Rankin Poore

Beyn, A. (2005) "People's feet only go where their eyes have already been".
Stefan Panhans: Womit wird eigentlich vergoldet bei einem Walduberfall frag ich mich gerade, 106-111.

Ariane Beyn's essay on photographer Stefan Panhans sheds light on the artist's concerns within each image. Beyn compares Panhans' series of young saleswomen, gallery workers, and waitresses to Vermeer's studies of women caught at work in the artist's studio. The composition is of paramount importance in this work. Because of the artist's dedication to composition, Beyn writes that the photographs fall, "somewhere between the staged and the spontaneous". At first glance, these images seem impromptu photographic records of women at work. When examined further, it becomes clear that the photographer has shot these images from an exterior view, behind a wall of glass. Panhans uses the sheet of glass to his advantage, often lining up reflections on the barrier with the subject. In one particular photo, a young woman is seen resting on couch in a department store. The window which separates the foreground from the background is reflecting a red vehicle in such a way that the model appears to be inside it. His fusion of street photography and narrative portraits successfully creates an air of timelessness.

That sense of timelessness is what initially attracted my attention. I find certain images in this series to be reminiscent of Edward Hopper's paintings of women in New York City interiors. Both artists share a similar sense of composition. There is a strong sense in this work, as well as in Hopper's, of uninvited spectatorship, due to the artist's spatial separation from the model.

Sunday Entry: Seung Woo Back

Seung Woo Back, who hails from Taejon, South Korea, created a two part series of photographs which finds fabricated miniatures juxtaposed with real-life locations. In the series "Real World 1" the artist visited Aiisworld Amusement Park in Seoul and photographed their miniature versions of world landmarks. Back included the South Korean buildings behind the model cities to accentuate his main theme of the culture clash between the East and the West. It is difficult to discern any differences between the modern buildings at first. After careful inspection, it becomes clear that the structures in the foreground are fabrications due to their streamlined appearance. The city of Seoul becomes a spectator, as it looms behind the miniature buildings. Back's images have a brilliant, surreal quality to them. In some views, icons from different cultures overlap and compete for a space within the frame. The World Trade Center stands near the London Bridge, and traditional Asian ships drift in the waters nearby. "Real World 2" is equally powerful. The large color scenes, set in real life locations, are populated by little toy soldiers. The images are strikingly beautiful, and it can take some time before the viewer notices the presence of the soldiers. Against their surroundings, toy men are dwarfed, and their battles are rendered insignificant. This latter series relates more to the individual forming his own identity separate from that of the larger group. I admire how Seung Woo Back can create such a statement about culture by adjusting the lens, allowing Seoul to creep in behind. The city, as well as the country, are unwitting spectators in this series.


www.artrabbit.com/features/features/september_2007/abandoned_protocol

www.foiltokyo.com/gallery/eg/past/realworldexhibitioneg.html

www.english.ganaart.com/exhibition/2008062/biography.02.html

Thursday Entry: Discourse

"...while photographers were involved with photographic form, artists in revolt against abstract and minimalist art became enamored of photography for its content"
-Andy Grundberg

Galassi, P. (1995) "Photography Is a Foreign Language".
Contemporaries: A Photography Series: Philip-Lorca diCorcia, 5-14.

Peter Galassi examines the artistic climate surrounding Philip-Lorca diCorcia while he was in school, and shortly thereafter. DiCorcia was influenced greatly by the photographic movements of the 1970s and 1980s and found success when he was able to skillfully blend popular styles to suit his own vision. The language of conceptual, Postmodernist photography was spreading throughout the country, and the young artist admired the innovative ideas of Larry Sultan and Cindy Sherman. In addition to the burgeoning wave of conceptual art, diCorcia was exposed to traditional documentary photography through Tod Papageorge, one of his instructers at Yale. In 1990, diCorcia used documentary techniques and cinematic lighting deftly in his Hollywood Series. His approach was similar to that of a documentarian, yet the lighting and ambiguous narratives in the series adhere to the directorial mode of photography.
DiCorcia explores numerous locations in his series, yet the lighting remains consistent throughout. I admire the bold, artificial lighting that he introduces into his tableaux, and strive to link my photographic series together through dramatic lighting.

Lecture Entry: Professor Todd Cronan

At the heart of Art History Professor Todd Cronan's presentation, From Postmodernism to Modernism: Painting as Affect Machine, was the conflict between what a work of art means vs. what it does to the viewer. Cronan illustrated the issue with several classic paintings, accompanied by statements from other learned art historians and critics. Yve-Alain Bois wrote that his body produced a physical reaction to the violence he saw in Henri Matisse's "Harmony in Red". Bois likened the experience of viewing the saturated red color in the painting to actual physical trauma. Painter Wassily Kandinsky believed that "color is a means of exerting a direct influence upon the soul". In his view, yellow was always aggressive and unsettling to the viewer. Modernist artists believed that color and line alone could affect the audience. Horizontal lines, for instance, always recalled the horizon and expressed a sense of relaxation. These Modernists valued the physical response a piece of art could induce over the mental comprehension of work.
Cronan believes that meaning is more relevant than physical reactions. He argues that the meaning of the work lies in the artist's original intention. While the viewer may formulate multiple assessments of a painting in response to its meaning, the physical affects, "are not debatable". If a certain painting, by the likes of Francis Bacon, makes your stomach hurt, that is not up for discussion. Art work must be valued beyond its immediate impact on the body.
I was very impressed with Cronan's arguments. He produced arguments and quotations from credible sources on both sides of the issue. It seems strange that one would limit an artwork to just a physical sensation, and not proceed to examine the content of the work.