Lecture Entry: Josua Poteat and Elizabeth Seidel Morgan

On the evening of March 26th, VCU's English Department hosted two of their previous MFA graduates to present a lecture and give readings of their own poetry. Joshua Poteat received his MFA in 1997 and has gone on to be a published poet, with his 2004 book, Ornithologies. His poetry is visually striking and often quite humorous. Poteat finds inspiration for his poems from various sources, including the artwork of sculptor Alice Aycock. The author admits that he, "steals titles from other works", even naming one poem "Illustrating a Machine to Catch and Reproduce Ghosts" after Aycock's sculpture. Being a Richmond native, there are many references to historical events that happened in Church Hill in his poetry, including one poem about the legendary train tunnel collapse of 1921. His poems evoke images from the early 2oth century. In his upcoming book, the chapters are sorted into fictional departments in an old Sears and Roebuck Department store. In one poem under the heading "Lighting Department", Poteat imagines light bulbs created to replicate the lighting quality of 1920. Historical events and characters effectively coexist with present day surroundings.

Born in 1937, Elizabeth Seidel Morgan was one of the first graduates of VCU's MFA Program for Creative Writing. Despite her years, Morgan was bright and fiery, reliving her early poems with a sharp intensity. Her poems contain violent and barbed diction, which is apparent in a number of the works she shared. The poem "How Much Was the Most Elvis Ever Weighed?" relates a true encounter with Elvis Presley when he was 18 and she was just 16 years old. She met the legendary musician with a friend after one of his shows and her friend posed on his lap for a picture. In the poem, the author mournfully recounts that both Elvis and her teenage friend died around the same period of time, both from drug overdoses. Morgan does write about bitter periods in her life, yet never forgets her sense of humor as evidenced in "All My Friends' Pet are Growing Old". She was a delight to listen to and imparted a number of keen observation on the audience.

Lecture Entry: Amy Stein

Earlier this month, our department hosted photographer Amy Stein, a graduate of New York's School of Visual Arts. Stein first became interested in photography in her early thirties, assisting at photo schools and submitting images to online publications and newspapers. When one of her images became the cover photo of the Washington Post, she gained the confidence and momentum to keep invested in photography. Stein's first real series of images were born after the DC sniper incident and was titled, "Women and Guns". Because Washington DC was the capital of guns and violence, she studied the culture of people who own and use guns frequently. This series eventually led to an interest in the animals slain after a hunting party. Stein began to research taxidermists and photograph their own handiwork in Pennsylvania. The artist came up with the novel idea of returning these taxidermic animals back into nature, where once they lived. This idea grew into the "Domesticated" series, which was created in Pennsylvania in the summer of 2005. The images are based on real stories of animals coming out at night and wandering around town, yet they have a fantastic, otherworldly feel. These animals look for their old habitat amongst parking lots, swimming pools, and light poles. All of the animals appear to be living as they amble discontentedly around man-made environments.
In a more recent series, Stein photographed ill-fated motorists along America's highways. The "Stranded" series features portraits of drivers and passengers whose vehicles have broken down, standing next to their dilapidated cars. This series does not jog the imagination as her previous efforts have. Perhaps this imagery is too familiar or the compositions are too close to other works.

It may be because Amy Stein is relatively new to the world of photography, but it is refreshing to hear from an artist who appears grounded and not too swept up in her success. I liked to hear about her process and the evolution of her ideas. Stein was quick to acknowledge her influences and that there exists similar series to her own. She spoke earnestly and welcomed questions from the audience.

Monday Entry: Katherine Wolkoff

Katherine Wolkoff's body of work is surprisingly diverse, deftly moving from one subject matter to the next. She was born in 1976 in Indiana, studied American History at Barnard College, and graduated with an MFA in Photography from Yale in 2003. In 2007, the artist revealed her series of deer beds, which are simple impressions made by the animals in grass fields. Much like her silhouettes of birds and people, this series of photos engages the viewer, inviting him to imagine the details of the animal, given just the outline. There is a great sense of motion and unease in these pictures, for the animals would have had to be startled away from these habitats relatively quickly before the photos were taken, in order for the beds to be intact. Her silhouettes are equally intriguing; in a way, they are working against the audience's immediate needs while exercising their creativity. Wolkoff allows the colorful plumage of the birds and the facial features of her human models to be superimposed on these silhouettes. We end up seeing just what we want to see in the end. She has moved on to a series of images of New Orleans, after being razed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

I am a great proponent of work that suggests more than it actually shows to the viewer. Absence can be extremely powerful when handled as wisely as Wolkoff has shown. Her deer beds are deceptively simple and carry with them a great deal of possibility.






http://www.wipnyc.org/blog/katherine-wolkoff.html

http://katherinewolkoff.com/

www.point-mag.com/pdf/Point-KatherineWolkoff.pdf

Thursday Entry: Personification

"The rooms that she generates through her photographs of models are not only the rooms of their former occupants...they are also the artist's own rooms"
-Maren Lubbke-Tidow

Lubbke-Tidow, M. (2007) "Spatial Sense"
Anna Lehmann-Brauns: Sun in an Empty Room, 59-61.



The essay published along with Anna Lehmann-Brauns' series, Sun in an Empty Room looks back at her early student work in order to appreciate her current photographs. Author Maren Lubbke-Tidow relates that Anna's student work was much different than that of her peers in Germany; while others were focusing on conceptual documentary self-portraits, she created miniature model interiors, which stood in for people in her life. She injected each constructed space with a personality and christened each image with a person's name as a title. Anna drew from her own experiences with these individuals, the memories she has of them to fashion her interiors. It is more evident in some images (for instance the boy's bedroom titled, "Sebastian") why she decided to title them after an individual. One photograph displays a vibrant red bathroom complete with a tub bubbling over, curiously named "Mamma". Many of her photos go beyond just the owners' own living space and ask just what it is that we remember of someone. The author can relate to the more obscure spaces, commenting that the smell of a certain brand of soap instantly evokes memories of summers with her grandparents. These rooms function as spaces within the artist's mind, revealing intimate recollections of the people in her life.

When working on my series of interiors, I try to find elements that elicit strong memories for me. I attempt to give life to these areas with objects that I introduce to the scene, or with those that I come across that are already in place. The quality of the lighting, in addition to the physical elements in the photographs help me place my own stamp on the locations.

Monday Entry: Candida Hofer

Candida Hofer, who was born in Eberswalde, Germany in 1944, is one of the many acclaimed artists who have learned the traditions of the deadpan aesthetic while studying with the great Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf. Like her fellow peers, Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, and Thomas Ruff, Hofer maintains a cool, detached mood throughout her work. She is known for her exquisite deadpan photographs of public spaces and institutions, which are eerily devoid of people. She has photographic collections of libraries, offices, theaters and more locations. Absence and ambience are her two central concepts; time passes in these public locations and the lighting shifts, and the viewer is reminded of haunted spaces where once life flourished. She is interested in the formal qualities of these spaces, yet it is not the design of the locations alone that draws the viewer's attention; in a good number of these scenes, there are hints that people have just left or will be returning soon.

I am aiming towards this direction with my current series. I love the cool quality of light in these interiors. The absence that I was hinting at with the first part of this year's series is quieter in my new work, but no less apparent, I feel. Hofer's series is similar to my own, in terms of the angles and locations, yet I want to put more emphasis on individual objects and incorporate dramatic lighting.


http://www.renabranstengallery.com/hofer.html

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E3DA173AF936A25753C1A9629C8B63

http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/hfer_candida.php

Thursday Entry: Activation

"It is only through activating the space of the spectator that the space of the photograph begins to take shape"
-Michael Tarantino

Tarantino, M. (1999) "Haunted Houses".
James Casebere: Asylum, 104-115.

Author Michael Tarantino's five part article is a thorough and lucid examination of James Casebere's Asylum series. The series of photographs under consideration is of models of interiors, devoid of people, and featuring blank white walls and careful lighting. The author notes that Casebere's imagery is subtle enough to suggest a narrative and not impose one. The photos are curious and allow the viewer to cull information from various elements. In more than one image, the window in the scene is not letting in enough light to sufficiently illuminate the space, yet the interior is awash with light. Tarantino finds oddities like that to be part of the artist's plan to activate the viewer into giving the work a second look. He sights Casebere's variation of angle and distance between the viewer and the subject as further strategies to gain the appropriate attention that the work demands. There are four photographs depicting the entrance-ways to neighboring tunnels that actively pull in the audience because of their disparate framing (two are vertical and two are horizontal) and the variation of the point of view.

In my most recent individual meeting with Paul, the two of us discussed my need to adopt different points of view, and the distance between the viewer and the object(s) of interest in my photographs. Casebere is very subtle in this regard; his images pull you in and you do not often find yourself questioning the vantage point. I find myself more immersed now in Casebere's work having read Tarantino's article.

Monday Entry: Katrin Freisager

Freisager was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1960, and has studied photography in Berlin, Paris, and New York. Her artwork often centers around the themes of suspension, ambiguity, and the tension between fiction and reality. The majority of her photographs feature young women, uniformly attired in tan stockings and underwear. There faces are not often revealed, and they are taking part in actions and activities that seem foreign to the viewer. A strange sense of alienation and foreboding pervades her imagery. The scenes are nearly monochromatic. In Freisager's untitled series from 2002, several limbs from various hosts combine hauntingly to create one abstract form. Her photographs are related to painting, and often look like figural studies for a later work.

I love her restricted palette and emphasis on form. Because of the limited color range, the shadows appear deeper, playing a stronger role. The images featuring groups of models are more interesting to me than the earlier ones with one solitary subject. The purpose behind their interactions is withheld from the audience, a concept that I find intriguing.


http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_7_39/ai_75761343

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/untitled/

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980CE2D81F39F930A25755C0A9659C8B63

Thursday Entry: Subjectivity

"We have long since lost our faith in photography's capacity to show untempered reality. Indeed, it is the very opposite that fascinates us today: the subjective vision of seeing how somebody else sees the world around us, which challenges, awes and inspires"
-Christian Eggenberger

Eggenberger,C. (2004)"Introduction".
Photo Suisse, 11-15.

Critic Christian Eggenberger notes the importance and extreme variety of vision exhibited by Switzerland's photographers. Switzerland boasts a great wealth of talent, which may be a result of its mottled cultural make-up. It is the personality brought to the work by each individual artist that cannot be duplicated, despite similar subject matter. The author writes that native artists Balthasar Burkhard and Thomas Fletcher both work with mountains as a concept, but each man has a unique vision and goes about his photography in a different manner. The former envisions the image before arriving on location, while the latter needs to be on the sight and figures out what he is making after it has been captured on film. Every artist is shaped by personal experiences, which have a way of appearing in their work. As an artist, it is terribly difficult to ignore certain compositions and themes relevant to your own interests.

This collection has introduced me to two artists who have similar concerns, but whose work can clearly be differentiated from the others. Both Katrin Freisager and Olivier Christinat have played with the female form and neutral backgrouds in their imagery, but each one has effectively put their own spin on the subject matter. Katrin's work is more playful and at times dark, while Olivier's can be more deadpan, and focuses more on the power of the model's gaze.

Monday Entry: Olivier Christinat

Christinat's artwork builds upon the examination of truth in the medium of photography, which I have been researching recently.He is a native of Switzerland, yet was born in France in 1963, and studied photography at the School of the Arts in Lausanne from 1980-1984. He has shifted between various styles, he has an extensive body of female nudes with neutral backgrounds, but I find his staged group scenes the most enigmatic and fascinating. His series Evenements, which was created between 1999 to 2002, depict groups of men and women, all dressed in dark suits and dresses and posed in such a way to recall famous political photographs. One of the images shows a group of six women gathered around the body of man laid out on a table. This tableaux is based upon a photograph of a Spanish family's wake during the Francisco Franco regime taken by W.Eugene Smith. It is fascinating to look at all of the various gestures displayed by the models in his images. Once he takes the figures from these politically charged photographs and removes them from their context, the interest level soars. The uniformity of their costuming is juxtaposed with the individuality in their gestures.

I first became aware of Olivier Christinat while my current series was still in its gestation period, one year ago. I was immediately drawn to the positioning of his figures and intrigued by the limited color palette he employs. The facial expressions are an integral part of the photographs, and I intend to incorporate more faces into my series.


http://expositions.bnf.fr/face/rencon/chris/index.htm

http://www.pascalpolar.be/repartistes/christinat/christinat.html

www.gdvs.com