Tuesday, June 10, 2008

subject as enemy

i recently read this quote and loved it.

"Your subject is your main enemy." Jan Banning

i like the idea of a subject-as-enemy theme. however figuratively one might take the meaning...

anyone inspired with any great portraits to share?

Banning himself has a fascination with (and one might say some problems with) global bureaucracy. here is one of my favorite photos, "Bureaucracy in Yemen," from Banning's series The Office.

some have said that "the desk is the real subject" of this series. i like that idea.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Isn't it the other way round:

The artist is the enemy.

Anonymous said...

i like it. both sound pretty worthy of discussion to me.

Anonymous said...

Absolutely - for a nice opposition you could say there are two kinds of artist, and two kinds of subject.

And then expand from there...

Anonymous said...

go on, colin, you have my attention...

:-)