subjectify

let it bleed

2011-05-05T11:10:00.005-04:00

these photographs by israeli photographer Rona Yefman have stuck in my mind for a few years.

Rona says:

"I search for extreme situations and people that embody possibilities of freedom, and am fascinated by the gap between what we are, and what we want to be. By establishing close relationships with my subjects, we begin to search together for different ways to awaken the body and to elicit the self through the construction of different characters."

images above: Gil, Martha, and Eden (from her project "Let It Bleed.")

subject echo: that pensive gaze

2010-07-26T17:00:00.007-04:00

when i saw the top image (taken by Jocelyn Lee) of Dr. Rachael Phelps in a New York Times Magazine article on "The New Abortion Providers" it brought to mind Hellen van Meene's photograph of another gazing lady.

the photo pair gives me the uncanny thought of van Meene's teenage subject—with her blond curls, set mouth, baroque hand gestures, and her expressive and introspective gaze—growing out of her awkward adolescence (van Meene's specialty) and into the visual role of the calm and caring doctor.

in the Times article, Dr. Phelps speaks about how chronic pain she experienced as an adolescent girl is what led her to her path as a doctor at Planned Parenthood.

i think you can see the deep feeling we associate with adolescence transform into empathy—on the part of both the subject and the viewer—in the images above.

fallen from trees

2010-07-02T10:39:00.004-04:00

Detail of My Sort of Light
by Ander Monson

Now I know that everything is a body,
so even the snow and the sand and
the blood rivered down in the snow,
and snowed on again so it's buried
is a body. All things are bodies in photos—
detail of the left side of a breast and the arm's
pit—detail of the sled slumbered under
by the storm's leavings. Detail of my sort
of so-early half-lit eyelid light that bodies
are near to invisible and touch is no longer
the sole way of knowing, and outline is all
that there is. Detail of your body as it does
its morning leaving thing. Detail of what
light there is on your skin. Detail of land-
scape of let me in please and coffee, warm
when the weather's action on this body is less
than ideal. Landscape with pear. Landscape
with weather and part of a breast in the frame.

photograph from Susan Worsham's project Fallen From Trees. (click on the image to see it large enough to make out the pears. :-)

joan jonas

2010-04-02T13:50:00.002-04:00

hiating

2009-09-08T18:11:00.005-04:00

as has been obvious to any regular Subjectify readers, i've decided to take a long-term hiatus from posting (regularly). i've been doing a bit more planning and thinking on my own work, which seems to be moving away from straight portraiture. i think struggling with portraiture has really been what this whole blog was about, so it seems appropriate.

anyway, thanks for reading, folks, and i'll post more news when i have it.

portraiture and 'controversies'

2009-06-04T17:15:00.008-04:00

i thought that Michael Kimmelman's great review of the Controversies exhibit in Paris was especially thought-provoking in light of my last post and issues i've been thinking about lately in portraiture and subjecthood. an excerpt below, from the New York Times.

"By virtue of its economy and proliferation, photography has been one of the most convenient weapons of the powerless even while it serves the powers that be. During the early 1960s, when French authorities required Algerians to have identity cards, a conscript in the French Army, Marc Garanger, was ordered to shoot their portraits. He photographed some 2,000 Algerian women, many of whom had been, until they uncovered themselves for his camera, veiled throughout their adult lives.

This was a profound violation for these women. Making the pictures turned Mr. Garanger entirely against French rule. He registered his opposition in these official portraits, through the humanity of his subjects, whose anger, which the pictures make perfectly obvious, conveyed both their oppression and resistance.

“For 24 months I never stopped, sure that one day I would be able to testify with these images,” Mr. Garanger recalled two decades later. “All of this I did with more force than the dominant military ideology of the era that surrounded me with hatred and violence.”

With more enduring effect anyway. A particularly beautiful portrait of a woman named Cherid Barkaoun, mournful but proud, large eyes kohl-rimmed, hair braided, absently clutching a scarf to her chest as if to keep hold of some sliver of privacy, reaches across half a century." --Michael Kimmelman

subject echo: the power of images

2009-06-02T17:36:00.000-04:00

i recently re-read Regarding the Pain of Others and Regarding the Torture of Others by Susan Sontag. with the news lately, i have been thinking a lot about the cultural and political discourse around images of torture and war, and the way that our reactions to the images take on a life separate even from the referent (the act of torture) depicted within them.

much has been written about the ways in which war photography often echoes iconic religious imagery. but i have been wondering how, in turn, the iconography of the new war and torture photography is also influencing fine art photographers today?

no matter where you come down on the questions surrounding whether these photographs should be released (though i imagine most photographers believe that the images should be released and talked about), they inarguably seep into our individual psyches and ultimately have a profound affect on our cultural consciousness.

one example: today i was looking at photographs from a personal self-portrait project in which none of the images are explicitly politically-motivated, and saw in one of them traces of the Abu Ghraib torture photos. perhaps i just have this on the brain, or perhaps the connections are there in a larger or sub-conscious sense. as always, i'd love to hear your thoughts and see other connections.

above top, 2004 image of a prisoner being tortured at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, capture from a news video.

below, "Origin," from the series Bend So Not to Break by Jessica Somers. more images, and a project statement, available at f-stop magazine. Somers says that her self-portrait work "explores the struggle and balance between the choices one makes and the uncontrollable circumstances that intervene with these choices." the images attached to the subject above appear to be old family photographs, but it is interesting to think of how we might interpret the final image differently if the photos depicted within it were diferent.

monocarpic

2009-05-11T22:10:00.002-04:00

i have seen Sam Falls' work lately on different blogs and discussions, most notably on ihp, the Hey, Hot Shot blog and This is That. i agree that there is something fantastic in the (dis)connections between his images and the way he assembles them into a narrative, but that something is not easily articulable.

his latest work, Monocarpic, is a series of still life observances with portraits mixed in, and i picked out a few portraits to feature here. overall, his assemblage of work is fairly diverse and colorful. the three photos above pop up at intervals and stuck out for me. together, they are elusive, creepy, and curly.

i think Subjectify readers will find that a lot of the questions he is tackling are ones we have been butting our heads up against in looking at portraits together in the art-photo context. his interview with Johanna Reed on This is That is a great read. on his approach to portraiture, Sam Falls says:

When it comes to critical theory and influential texts, I was reading and thinking a lot about object-hood and the alienating Other found in photography, especially in portraiture....my photos of the backs of heads...are sort of "anybody portraits," where the viewer is not an Other but left to their own imagination of the central idea of a portrait, which is “What does the face look like?”

in fact, Falls does have several other anti-portraits of the backs of heads (including an entire blurb book of them), but i think the ones above offer a little more in setting a narrative tone than the straight back-of-head images.

the other questions that are primary in his work are ones that i think are at the crux of the relationship between photographers and viewers--and crucial for us to ask each other. why is the artist offering me these images? (and why in this narrative order?) what do i see when i see them? (and what does it all mean?) to find the answers, we have to grapple with the sticky question of the 'author' and authorial intention. does the perspective or identity of the author trump the interpretation of the viewer? or, does the viewer's ultimate interpretation of the 'text' make the photographer's original intent irrelevant? no matter where your feelings fall on this spectrum, these questions come up again and again in visual art, as in literature.

Sam Falls' response seems to be to reject ironic abstraction in his aproach and try to make work that is as personally meaningful as possible. (emphasis on the 'personally.') i'll end with his take on these questions:

I think art is really valuable when the viewer gets to know the artist and where they are coming from. This is where a photographer must relate their subjectivity to the viewer through content and composition. This is perhaps why I've really begun leaning toward photographing the people, places, and things that hold lasting personal value to me. I used to think this was something reserved for amateur photography and photo albums, but now perhaps it needs to be reinstated in a fine art context in today’s image-based world where meaningless images are omnipresent. I mean any advertisement created by a nameless photographer of a model casting a blank stare away from the camera just tells the viewer "I don't care," and I think just saying, "This is what I care about, and you have things you care about," is now a very interesting concept to me.

subject echo: that distinctive sprawl

2009-05-01T18:10:00.006-04:00

nice, Ms. Hutchinson!

top image: "Nude, 1936" by Edward Weston, bottom image: "Inspired by Edward Weston 1," from the Model Husband Series by Kate Hutchinson.

here's what Kate Hutchinson has to say about her Model Husband series:

Looking at the intimacy and trust that must exist between two people in order for one to photograph the other throughout their relationship, I take as models these men who used their wives as subjects. I examine their methods and approach through mimicry. How did these artists balance the need to create with the need to preserve something so dear? The relationship between artist and muse is at stake but so is that between husband and wife. How did they, and how do I, resign the two? Futhermore looking at a potential shift in gender roles over the past century I also wonder: are we telling the same story now but in reverse?

subject echo: dreams of flight

2009-04-30T13:07:00.001-04:00

what is it about toy planes?

(Shane Lavalette, Alec Soth, and Corinne Vionnet.)

all i want

2009-04-28T14:53:00.000-04:00

Sarah McKemie's project All I Want has me transfixed. sometimes, when viewing photography projects, i have a hard time taking in a range of portraits that might seem a bit unconnected and don't have a project statement--it can be hard to find a way in. not with these; they clicked for me immediately.

i meant to post about them some months ago, but instead, started bugging Sarah to talk to me about them. she was incredibly gracious to this pestering stranger, and so i'm happy to share her thoughts on "All I Want" with you. i think they're thought-provoking and worth the wait:

In my current and on-going body of work, All I Want, I explore the push and pull of intimacy and the awkwardness of desire. Through my series of portraits I play with and examine the fantasies, obsessions, myths, and stereotypes about longing.

I am drawn to the way our bodies tell stories of confidence, self-consciousness, or humility. Through photography I look at rituals of adornment and gesture—the way we create and display ourselves for others, and how we define ourselves based on how desirable we think others find us.

The images I capture in All I Want recreate and document the innocence and complexity of my subjects, questioning the intricacies of sexuality that are undefined, and even celebrate this ambiguity. -Sarah McKemie

some of my favorite images from the series are above. i chose them before reading the statement, but now i like thinking about what this slice of images has to say about the myths we carry about intimacy, longing, and desire.

enjoy the rest of the project here.

p.s. greetings Blogs of Note visitors! i hope you like photographerie!

book week: to ettlingerize

2009-04-07T08:30:00.012-04:00

Bookslut just posted today:

"I never understood why so many writers use Marion Ettinger [sic] for their author photo, since they all end up looking like those 19th century corpse photos. All of em."

thoughts, readers? chime in in the comments.

personally, i have a bit of a soft spot for Marion Ettlinger precisely because her style is so stubborn, iconic, and recognizable. high-contrast, pretentiously serious, black and white portraiture is not exactly a rare or unique style in the history of photography. and yet her photographs can be spotted on site, from 20 paces across the Barnes & Noble. whether you like her look--ye olde dodge and burn--or not, you have to admit she's made the most of it.

there seems to be an uptick of discussion of her online lately, in the blogs, and in the news.

for more, here is a comprehensive 2004 New York Times piece on the "Age of Ettlinger:"

"If you didn't know any better, you would think that Ettlinger's pictures were deliberate antitheses to earlier book-jacket photographs, something like the 19th-century French realists reacting to their romantic predecessors--only in reverse."

(and, more provocatively:
"A portrait's function is to have no function except the representation of the subject.")

here, too, are Alec Soth's thoughts on Ettlinger and author photos, from his old blog:

"Ettllinger [sic] is a good photographer. But there is something off-putting about her relentless effort to make authors look like, well, Authors."

finally, i also think that Conscientious' recent comments on schtick have something to bear here as well:

"A well known photographer once told me that an extremely well known and influential gallerist had told him that the road to success was to find one's niche and then to simply produce work that way (think babies in "cute" dresses or Weimaraners or overly Photoshoped celebrities or whatever else you can think of). I suppose that works nicely if seen with the eyes of someone who knows how to sell work--after all, what appeals to people (and thus sells nicely) today should do so tomorrow, right?
But as someone interested in art as somebody's personal expression, it strikes me as listening to music where the record is stuck on the player..."

so, my answer to Bookslut? i agree with Soth's sentiment. writers (or their publishers) choose Marion Ettlinger for their photographs because they want to look not like writers, or even authors, but Authors. an imprimatur is a rather powerful thing.

your comments?

p.s. authors clockwise from top left: Joyce Carol Oates, Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, David Foster Wallace.

circulation

2009-04-03T13:20:00.004-04:00

continuing this week's book theme, i wanted to note Jenny Mathias' new project Circulation, in which the contents of illustrated books are photographed as the pages flip in long exposure. her project statement says:

"The long exposure compresses image and text, selectively highlighting certain aspects of the information conveyed by the book while obsuring other information the same way that the human mind selectively remembers or forgets certain images or ideas. Mathias' images reveal an internal existence of books which cannot be viewed in real time, but only expressed through photography's ability to compres time into one static image."

it's a cool idea, and i like the results. i enjoy the way the images are identical in composition while different books offer different ideas or nod toward disparate genres. the top image conjures up thoughts of spirit photography, whereas the bottom one makes me think of the use of collage in fashion design.

Jenny's show opens Monday, April 6th at the Pratt Institute Media Arts Gallery, 200 Willoughby Ave., Steuben Hall, in Brooklyn, NY.

p.s. i can personally attest to Jenny's longtime interest in libraries and oversized books. i took this photo of her several years ago when we met in a class at Cooper Union:

reader, i subjectified him

2009-03-31T23:41:00.010-04:00

i enjoyed the almost-silhouettes from Katherine Wolkoff's series Nocturne when i first saw them (top). and i love this one as an actual silhouette on the cover of the new Vintage Classics edition of Jane Eyre coming out next week.

i'm fascinated by the practice of using fine art photography on book covers in general (is it wrong that i think it's sweet when art photos have a 'practical' 'use' too?), and this is a fantastic example, gleaned from the awesome Book Cover Archive.

Jane Eyre was published only eight years after the first daguerreotype portrait was taken in 1839.

as for the potential meanings of this particular cover photograph selection for this novel, it made me think of the book Fiction in the Age of Photography by (my former professor, the fabulous) Nancy Armstrong:

"The allurements of the fully exposed body necessarily canceled out both its maternity and its feminity, since these were private functions of the woman...While the respectable woman could be said 'to have' a female body, her relation to that body resembles what D.A. Miller calls 'the open secret.' Her identity as a feminine and maternal woman indicated that she had an erotic life which she had scrupulously withheld from public view. To grasp the extent to which this open secret shaped Victorian fiction, one need only recall how any one of Charlotte Brontë's heroines shrinks into corners and niches or fades into the background behind her more flamboyant rivals and companions. Jane Eyre, Lucy Snowe, and Caroline Helstone will do anything to avoid the limelight, and Brontë consequently allows us to see them only as they watch men watching other women make spectacles of themselves.

The two halves of the popular body--the feminine and the female--were indeed two halves of a single cultural formation. That construct was organized by a contradiction between the body which contained and concealed a woman's sexuality, on the one hand, and the body as manifestation of that sexuality, on the other. The feminine and the female could not coexist within a single photograph, since they ostensibly addressed entirely different audiences who looked at the body in entirely different ways."

and we'll give the last word to Ms. Brontë herself:

"Listen, then, Jane Eyre, to your sentence: to-morrow, place the glass before you, and draw in chalk your own picture faithfully; without softening one defect; omit no harsh line, smooth away no displeasing irregularity; write under it, 'Portrait of a Governess, disconnected, poor, and plain.'"

the eyes of anne collier

2009-03-04T08:50:00.002-05:00

i've been having a hard time with portraits lately. i've taken a bit of time off from really looking at them (or taking them).

Anne Collier's approach to capturing the subject is very appealing to me right now. her images raise a lot of questions, ones that i enjoy--about appropriation, looking, documenting, nostalgia, and about why we take photographs.

the top image is from her "Woman With A Camera" series; it's a photograph of a promotional photo for "Eyes of Laura Mars" (the 1978 film in which Faye Dunaway sees--and photographs--through the eyes of a male serial killer). the second image is "8 x 10 (Left Eye #1)," from a recent series of photographs of 8 x 10 prints in photo paper boxes.

Collier has said of photographing other photographs and album covers: "It's got something to do with self-portraiture, but I'm not really in any of the photographs."

(listen to more at the 2006 Whitney Biennial site.)

self-portraits

2009-03-03T13:31:00.001-05:00

Amy Stein's blog offered an answer to my recent questions about female self-portrait projects that explore nudity and questions about the subject while featuring diverse body sizes and perspectives.

i really enjoyed looking through Jen Davis' portfolio and her self-portrait series. there are so many images that i enjoyed (though, at 44 photos, it could be edited down and focused a bit more for the web--that said, i think the breadth helped me understand the project more fully). the project does include several photos that directly address body image and self-esteem, which was at first a turnoff for me--i'd like to see one that doesn't some day--but they are also honest and fit in well with the overall piece.

also check out Jen Davis' project "I Ask in Exchange," featuring some pretty intense portraits of different men. Amy Stein comments: "You can definitely sense a strong female gaze in the images."

please keep sending more links my way.

feral bodies, tame bodies

2009-03-03T08:15:00.006-05:00

i am both compelled and troubled by Megan Cump's project Feral, which i saw on Flak Photo. in the project, Cump goes on solo hiking and kayaking trips and photographs herself going back to nature in some surprising tableaux. the images themselves are compelling enough: beautiful landscapes; contemplations of nature and man's role; a naked, young photographer interested in her ability to lose her humanity and have a feral immersion.

her website is organized so that you can see not only each photo, but a detail zoom of each image's selected punctum (see the above detail images: "bloodbath detail" and "siren detail"). i think the troubling part about the project for me is not the content, but two other things. the first one is desire to explain the importance of the images using the grainy details, instead of letting the viewer find its own meaning in the photograph. in this way, the details are offered as trophies, which i think undercuts the photos themselves. (this approach also reminds me a bit of the hide-and-seek product-placement ads playfully included in Alec Soth's Fashion Magazine.)

secondly, i am troubled a bit by something else, which is not Cump's fault, nor is it limited to her: self-portrait projects from a visually-privileged position of young, white, nude beauty. i have been thinking about the "trouble" with beauty in art photography for some time. i can see an alternate world in which i would earnestly feel that female photographers' naked self-portraits were brave, theoretically rigorous, challenging, honest, etc...etc... except i rarely do feel that way, because lately i notice that mainly thin, beautiful women engage in these projects in the first place. or at least, their projects are the ones that gain recognition in the art world (which is why i see them?). of course, such projects might have something thought-provoking and honest to offer, but overall, it still troubles me.

this uneasiness has kept me from embracing other work that i otherwise enjoy and find interesting, from Elinor Carucci's early work to Janice Guy. i'd love to hear from anyone else who has been thinking along the same lines lately. (and i don't mean to lump these photographers together with Flickr's Female Self-Portrait Artists' Support Group or anything, but it's been on my mind, and i would love to see some antidotes--feel free to email them to me. see also some more discussion of this here.)

back to Feral--some images from the project are below (non-detail views). Megan Cump's project statement is here, and is worth checking out too. she says:

"Important influences also include Freud’s concepts of the uncanny, turn-of-the-century “spirit photography,” and acts of sudden transformation found in myths."

catblogging van der zee

2009-03-01T22:49:00.005-05:00

the other day i had a wow moment, when i came across one of Harlem Renaissance photographer James Van Der Zee's last portraits. i'd seen it before but never given serious thought to it. but it is hard to wrap my head around the fact that Van Der Zee took the top photograph during the Great Depression, and the bottom one, of Jean-Michel Basquiat, in 1982 at the age of 96. what an amazing life's work.

(there's an interesting article about this period in Van Der Zee's life here, in a 1981 issue of Ebony.)

and Basquiat's portrait of Van Der Zee (VNDRZ) is below.

subject echo: ectoplasm!

2009-02-03T13:10:00.006-05:00

i saw Helga Härenstam's work on Conscientious, and enjoyed checking out her project "House of the Extraordinary." i especially liked reading the images in this series as contemporary, color explorations of the way technology and light can manifest as creepy and miraculous.

this reminded me of a book a friend recently gave me: Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible 1840 - 1900 (from the SFMoMA exhibition). the book explores the early use of photography to capture "the realm beyond our everyday vision," from space photography to microscopic particles, X-rays, and even spirit photography.

Helga Härenstam's image (top) instantly reminded me of this 1912 photograph of a medium (and her viewer) from Brought to Light.

whether photography is attempting to capture ectoplasm, the human spirit, or the connection that happens the moment the shutter clicks, i think the best of it is still searching for that realm beyond our everyday vision.

drapery

2009-01-28T08:11:00.001-05:00

French photographer Catherine Larré recently sent over her website. some of her work is a bit more gothic and romantic than my usual taste, but i enjoyed the above photographs of bodies and skin from an untitled project.

interestingly enough, she has several statements about her work on her site, all written by other people, in French, and available in translation. here's a quote from one that i enjoyed for being both random and ambiguous enough to offer a lens for thinking about any of her images. (and to think of folds of skin as drapery--fantastic.)

"Drapery," Roger de Piles wrote in 1699, “should not be arranged like dress as used in society; let pleats find their own place around limbs by chance, making them appear as they are and yet stand out through the diligent device of stroking, somehow emphasizing them, with softness and tender winding." --José Puig

twinship

2009-01-27T07:09:00.002-05:00

on sunday, i went to the International Center of Photography to see Weird Beauty: Fashion Photography Now. i am not an adept viewer of fashion photography, but i was drawn to an editorial menswear feature called Princeton--that turned out to be photographed by artist Collier Schorr. i really enjoy Schorr's work and was interested to see that that spark translated to fashion layouts as well. just like in her fine art endeavors, she is great at drawing something special out of the idea of men-as-subjects (and as objects of desire).

downstairs at ICP, there was a small exhibit on Hungarian photographer Martin Munkacsi, which included this image (installation view from my phone):

which in turn reminded me of Schorr's project The Wrestlers:

here's what she has to say about it:

"There never seems to be a wide range of emotional definitions of men. And I think in wrestling you really see so many different emotions, so many different reactions and interactions... A theme of twinship has always run through my work, of people that look alike. And that was another reason I was drawn to wrestling because I feel like wrestlers look a certain way... I can just tell a wrestler. And I’ve grown to love that face. And so I’m looking for guys that fit that pattern. I’m looking for this tribe of people."

p.s. in a stroke of kismet, Molly Landreth just blogged about "the lines of tribe" and relating it to Collier Schorr's take on capturing tribes, from Schorr's interview with the great PBS series Art21. view the synchronicity here.

that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve?

2009-01-23T09:00:00.005-05:00

"that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself"

President Obama's inaugural speech had a small, jangly note for me: his invocation for the lines of tribe to dissolve. in context, he is calling for an end to violence that uses tribal loyalty as an excuse for discord and exclusion. to see the common humanity that transcends tribal allegiance is an ideal and surely a necessary one. but taken in a much broader context, his statement also makes me consider when the melting pot is not enuf.

could the concept of unity exist without tribes? (and would we want it to?) tribes are enormously important to us and i think there is no chance of that importance lessening--if anything, new media's power to connect disparate people with similar interests will continue to propagate an increase in new tribes. and today's contemporary tribes, many affinity-based in nature, have shifted the traditional boundaries of our identity politics.

in photography, it is by now a time-honored (or time-worn) tradition to visually document a "tribe." many readers will recognize that this is not my favorite kind of project; especially one that chases at strangeness and specificity with a sort of butterfly-catcher's net. often these projects, from the POV of the photographer as sociologist, point toward a common humanity as well. (in that way some are universalizing in their otherwise minoritizing lens.)

but although i usually shy away from projects that earnestly attempt to capture and document an actual community, there are many instances where i really enjoy the photographer's particular take on how to group people together into a tribe and how to present them visually.

today, i would like to honor tribes in photography. below are some of the "tribal" projects that i've noticed or been thinking about lately. some i respond to more strongly than others. but all of them, as a category of photographic production, both trouble and delight me.

("this is the price, and the promise, of citizenship.")

Rewilding, Lucas Foglia
(Off-the-grid homesteaders)

Nollywood, Pieter Hugo

(Actors in the Nigerian film industry)

Still Lovers, Elena Dorfman
(Men and their real dolls)

Parameters, Corinne May Botz

(Agoraphobics and their environments)

Aicuna, Paola de Grenet

("The mysterious village of the albinos")

Perfectible Worlds, Sage Sohier

(Obsessive collectors and hobbyists)

Embodiment, Molly Landreth

("A portrait of queer life in America")

squirrel portraits

2009-01-21T09:23:00.000-05:00

what better way to dip one's toes back into the frothy waters of the blogosphere than with pictures of cute, fuzzy squirrels?

i've been pondering the tropes of editorial portraiture a bit lately, and i have to say, my hat was off to the photo editors at the New York Times when i read the recent article about serving squirrel meat at trendy restaurants in England ("Saving a Squirrel by Eating One").

there is no way to argue with the brilliant sequencing of the three photos in this article. the article moves through commercial photo clichés even as it moves through the animal's lifecycle: from cute overload-style stock photography (happy red squirrels vs. grumpy invading grey squirrels), to commissioned classic editorial portraiture (in this case, stuffy British gamekeeper complete with three-piece tweed suit, Wellies, hounds, and...dead squirrels), to minimalist food portraiture (portrait of the squirrel as...lunch). amazing.

great subjects: bettie page

2008-12-15T19:47:00.007-05:00

it would feel remiss not to post a wee tribute to one of the great subjects of photographic history: Bettie Page.

when i first read Page's New York Times obituary, i thought something was not quite right. it lauds her "trademark" "killer curves" and defines her as "the most famous pinup girl of the post-World War II era." both of these statements strike me as false. i think the easy label of "most famous pinup" actively erases the fact that most of her work was fairly underground and part of a sexual counterculture (if anything, she was the dark, trussed-up sister to the popular 1950s beauty queen ideal). and i don't think her (average) curves defined her photographic fate.

Bettie Page's trademark as a subject was her electric connection with the camera and, ultimately, the viewer. and by that criteria, she can't be beat.

my puzzling over the false notes of the obituary were assuaged a bit, but not completely, by Manohla Dargis' more thoughtful appraisal a few days later. her lede was the John Berger quotation: "To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself." but Dargis doubts that Berger's skeptical quote could apply to Page's natural, inviting, comfort and "ease" in her own skin.

Dargis is certainly responding here to Page's ready smile, her apparently-naked abandon, her winking knowingness... but is the viewer really recognizing her for her true self? i wouldn't guess so. (i mean, this was an abuse survivor who shot up to bondage-y fame before becoming a born-again Christian and having a nervous breakdown and a spate of mental health problems. i don't mean to pathologize, but i don't think i could know what was going on in her head.) perhaps the key to what made her so compelling on camera is a bit more complicated than easy analysis allows.

nude, naked, or otherwise, i'm comfortable with—and thankful for—the mystery.

muxes

2008-12-08T08:25:00.001-05:00

some folks probably saw the New York Times feature this weekend on muxes in Oaxaca, Mexico. muxe is a Zapotec word for that region's transgender women. Katie Orlinsky's slideshow of images from the community was pretty great—and for those who wanted to check out even more, it turns out her website has a more extensive collection. a few that weren't in the Times' edit are above.

thanks Joe for the link!

persona

2008-12-04T08:13:00.002-05:00

looking through all the photos in Hee Seung Chung's project "Persona" made me a bit sad. which in a way, is a testament to the subjects, because they are all actors. by examining the gray area where an actor's fictional persona becomes their temporary reality, Chung is exploring the line between "staged" and "authentic" emotional states.

Chung says: "This project also explores the issue of observing the grief of others in the photograph....we know it is a mere fabrication; the expression of grief certainly generates a psychological exchange between the actor, the persona and the beholder. They have a special quality as they break down our own emotional barriers. It is as if they bring about our own inherent feelings of grief and sorrow, which we conceal in everyday life or we project our own emotion or experience onto these melancholic faces."

given the blankness upon which Chung sets the scene, i thought the above subject worked particularly well. her flat affect and colorlessness matches the background, and makes her dark eyes all the more compelling.

Älterwerdens der Ausgangspunkt

2008-12-03T08:00:00.000-05:00

here's a project featuring older subjects that i saw just recently on Conscientious. it's Espen Eichhöfer's series "Die Alteren," which he translates as "The Elderly."

Eichhöfer writes: "They originated from questions regarding the phenomenon of aging. The protagonists of this staged production are my parents. The idea that everyone carries all of the previous stages of age within themselves inspired me."

the indiscriminate urge to engage everyone

2008-12-02T08:03:00.003-05:00

continuing on this week's theme of portraits of older subjects...

like Michelle Sank's yesterday, Sarah Small's photographs also do not have the aesthetic that i usually go for (which is, oh, you know, mopey, self-important, naturally-lit, brooding, that sort of thing). but i just love the scenarios she presents in her images. the wild colors, the harsh studio lighting, and the juxtapositions are lively and fun and actually surprising. (which sometimes feels a bit rare in this looking-at-photos-online game that we play.)

one theme i noticed in her work is a mix of elders and youngsters in interesting tableaux. little girls spaz out in front of crashed-out grandpas; naked teens and fashion models cavort with relatives, dolls, and animals; different generations pose together in frozen, constructed moments. i'm not sure what it all means, but Sarah Small's vision is consistent and consistently thought-provoking. also, her shoots look like they are a lot of fun.

a few of my intergenerational picks are above.

Small says:

"My constant curiosity, indiscriminate urge to engage everyone, and fascination with entangling myself in human drama guided me through boundless adventures...I‘ve engaged in an ongoing pursuit to find and photograph enchanting characters, animals, and bold color within all my projects—personal, fashion, editorial, and commercial."

theme week: older subjects

2008-12-01T07:30:00.005-05:00

the photo i posted last week of a proud-looking woman with beautiful white hair falling down her back reminded me that i have seen several portrait projects lately featuring older subjects. i'll check some of them out this week.

the first is by Michelle Sank, who was born in South Africa and now lives in England. her project "Wondrous" explores "femininity in older women."

Sank says she wants to look at "the ageing skin as something beautiful in itself, where body awareness and sensuality can still be enjoyed. I am also interested in the vulnerability of my subjects as well as their internal reflections and wisdom."

this is not the sort of project i am drawn to; it has a bit too much of an agenda, a woman-centered (and pink and silky) earnestness for my usual taste.

that said, it is true that the photographs themselves are not images you see every day. there is something quite valuable about that.

transamerica

2008-11-24T19:56:00.005-05:00

reader Jake Stangel sent me his work a while back: his new project "Transamerica" was shot while he biked across the country--with a 4x5 field camera in tow. impressive.

two of my favorite portraits from the body of work are above. you can check out more on his site, including a new project about surfers.

he says of the journey:

"I wanted to know what life was like between New York City and LA. Between here and there exists an entirely different world I knew nothing about, but very earnestly wanted to understand and experience. And what I found was an interconnected network of communities big and small, full of compassionate, authentic, different-minded people, each representing a divergent way of living life as an American. I aimed to capture a cross-section of these individuals and societies in an unadulterated and compassionate fashion."

his take on traveling through America reminds me a bit of the book Travels with Charley, which i read recently. (if only Steinbeck had photographed his trip in 1960!)

bratislava (from slovenia to slovakia)

2008-11-21T13:29:00.001-05:00

i was looking through the portfolio of Slovakian photographer Andrej Balco, and i was struck by his "Suburbs" project from a few years back. these are a bit more documentary than my usual taste, but i especially liked his eye for color.

Balco points out that more than 2 million Slovaks live in giant apartment complexes, many in the suburbs of Bratislava.

he says: "I have many times come across an opinion that living in block of flats is characterised by plaster...and grey colour. I was trying to avoid this straight off simplified view. Instead I was trying to point out the colourfulness, variety and vividity of life in the blocks of flats."

bonus subject echo:

Balco's photo of a prone man with water and a mural reminded me of Miranda Lehman's artsy, fairy-tale-like take on the same basic scene:

september (in slovenia)

2008-11-18T13:35:00.004-05:00

i've had a crush on Slovenia for a while (since i saw the film Varuh Meje a few years ago), so i enjoyed checking out the work of Slovenian photographer Nataša Kosmerl.

i like the way the two subjects in these photos cling to each other, and the way that they are held in place by their environment.

Kosmerl says: "I only photograph when I feel that the situation is emotionally strong." the series above is called "September" and you can see a few more photos from it here.

subject echo: books as camouflage

2008-11-17T22:36:00.003-05:00

when i saw the photo below by Helsinki-based artist Maija Luutonen on iheartphotograph, i thought of the above image by Dutch photographer Desiree Palmen.

i definitely see their respective projects (called "Please let's pretend" and "Camouflage") as being in dialogue with each other; a real subject echo.

(i've been known to hide behind a book before, myself.)

wassenaar, and the almost-forced disregard for the viewer

2008-11-14T13:02:00.002-05:00

i'm intrigued by the proliferation of new art photography magazines. i just checked out Noel Rodo-Vankeulen's online magazine Wassenaar. i was taken with Johanna Reed's thoughtful interview with Lina Scheynius, whose work i had not seen before. there is a casual, messy raunchiness to her work (including her fashion work) that manages to feel more present and unique than it at first seems it should (especially after Goldin and McGinley and other snapshot confessionals).

of her more personal, confessional work, Lina Scheynius says:

"My favorite pictures are the ones I have taken completely without having a viewer in mind. When I work on my personal pictures the viewer doesn't enter my mind until I start the selection process for my website. And even then I try to not think about him or her. If I did, I think a larger section of my work would remain unseen, as a lot of it is extremely personal to me and not initially captured to be viewed by others, but more as you mentioned, to document. Or experiment. I guess that it is my almost forced disregard of the viewer that gives you the impression that I am fearless."

what do you think? do you buy this explanation? it's true that it is the apparently-offhanded freedom, the spontaneous grain of the images that feels refreshing. but from my perspective, i would poke and question the idea of being able to disregard the viewer. these images seem to me to beg for the viewer's participation.

things are strange!

2008-11-12T20:54:00.015-05:00

last Thursday, i had the pleasure of attending the opening of Humble Arts Foundation's new group show, "Things Are Strange," at New Century Artists gallery in Chelsea.

as always, Humble puts on a fun party and a thought-provoking show. sometimes what i enjoy most about the process of group exhibition is reading the curatorial statement and the selected images together as a text. in this case, curator and gallant man-about-internet Jon Feinstein writes that the eighteen photographers in the show "explore the peculiar, idiosyncratic and often absurd elements of the contemporary world, using them as a metaphor for the current state of social and political affairs."

with this framework, i enjoyed the puzzle presented: to piece together the collected mix of landscapes (found and arranged), portraits (found and arranged) and more conceptual pieces through a lens of metaphor for our allegedly strange days. the piece that spoke to me the loudest was not one i expected: Ofer Wolberger's "Garbage Circle, Austin Texas, 2001" (below, jpeg doesn't do much justice). the print was prominently placed and Chelsea-big.

with its pointed juxtaposition of neo-pagan eco-worship and literal low-culture trash, it not only cast a circle, but i think you could even say that a spectre of new mysticism haunted the show.

the images in the show declare that symptoms of our strange cultural moment manifest when: we entomb ourselves in soulless office buildings, we search earnestly for signs of the paranormal, we feel stranded instead of freed by our American car-traveling culture, we angle for fascination through interventions into mundane urban landscapes, we fantasize about the line between raw nature and the remove of human conceptualism, we question the compulsion (and perhaps typologize the instruments used) to carve away at our bodies.

Feinstein posits that each artist "alludes to a world that is gradually falling apart at the seams." so what do these cries of Koyaanisqatsi add up to? are things strange? sure. oddly enough, what the show did not do is convince me that there is a particular nowness, a freshness, or a specificity to this strangeness. (or a politics of strangeness.) but it did make me hope (perhaps perversely) that we'll keep trying to unravel the seams a bit harder.

to that end, i'll leave you with a photograph from Emiliano Granado's "Ghostbusters" series, which i saw both as a portrait and as a continuation of photography's longtime fascination with capturing the spirit world...and also as one more piece of the puzzle.

happy ugly

2008-11-05T10:53:00.016-05:00

i know we were talking about the mashup of beauty and ugly this week, but here is something related: the potential for ugliness in happiness. if i find intrinsic beauty in the ecstasy and emotion in images like these, i have to also question—or trouble—that impulse when i look at the pure happiness on the faces above. context is all.

these are the folks who helped pass Prop 8 in California, the ballot measure with the title "Eliminates Right of Same–Sex Couples to Marry." they're happily celebrating their apparent victory, and all the gains it will bring them. the L.A. Times reports their names as "Bob Knoke, of Mission Viejo, Amanda Stanfield, of Monrovia, Jim Domen, of Yorba Linda, and J.D. Gaddis, of Yorba Linda," in case you'd like to write them a letter (Amanda looks a little conflicted to me, so maybe you can still make her feel bad).

despite being an empathetic person, and one susceptible to the emotional content of images, the expressions of joy and victory in the above image do nothing but make me angry. and my brain actually interprets their faces as violent and smug—how subjective.

today i offer you my happy face for the country for the presidential election results, and a sad face for us queers (and the foster kids of Arkansas who won't get homes now). both faces are a bit tear-streaky.

p.s. also, Queerty's take on the same image is here.

subject echo: magnum contest (and the terror of beauty)

2008-11-04T13:19:00.009-05:00

Alec Soth, blogging again over at the Magnum Photos blog, proposed a contest this week: match an image from the Magnum archive with a famous painting from art history.

it's a good game to play in between hitting refresh on all the news sites today... and the commenters have some pretty great suggestions already.

above, fun with Steve McCurry and Caravaggio.

i suppose these two images of Medusa continue this week's ugly/beauty theme. after all, Melville (and many other poets and writers) have celebrated Medusa's "beauty strange with horror allied," while Structuralist mythologist Jean-Pierre Vernant describes Medusa as a symbol of where "the strange beauty of the feminine countenance, brilliant with seduction, and the horrible fascination of death, meet and cross." my classicist friend points out that the Greeks were always crazy for terrible beauty. and so am i—hot stuff.

subject echo: "nothing is more fascinating, complex, ugly and beautiful than human beings"

2008-11-03T13:16:00.005-05:00

i was struck by Michele Abeles' creepy, artificial, and awesome portraits, which i saw on iheartphotograph.

Yale MFA grad Abeles says: "I am drawn to portraiture because nothing is more fascinating, complex, ugly and beautiful than human beings."

the subject and approach (and sheer blondness) conjured up references for me to Katy Grannan's subject Nicole from her project "Another Woman Who Died in Her Sleep." (discussed previously here, and shown below.) it is interesting how both subjects convey blank despondence and abjection with a similar, limited set of symbols (studios, skinnyness, fake-glamour, wigs, whiteness, beach, etc.).

lucy consumptive

2008-11-02T14:48:00.005-05:00

i just checked out the blog "consumptive.org: art photography and the uncanny" for the first time. i love it.

photo above is "lucy" by Manuel Alvarez Bravo. more on it here at consumptive.

communities

2008-10-29T21:59:00.001-04:00

though British photographer Alys Tomlinson is mainly commercial photog, i like her personal work. continuing on my recent interest in utopian themes, this project is called "Communities."

Tomlinson says:

"This is an ongoing series documenting intentional, alternative communities in the UK, with a particular emphasis on youth. The images attached were taken at a Quaker community in Derbyshire and an eco-community in Sussex. These communities are often quite hidden, but after spending several days with each community, I began to unearth and understand the social, political or spiritual vision that drives them."

lay flat (and think of utopia)

2008-10-23T18:12:00.008-04:00

i just made a donation to issue 1 of new photography journal Lay Flat for one reason:

it's going to have a feature called Castaways vs. Utopians!!

some of you know that the utopalypse (and post-apocalyptic visions in photography) is a theme near and dear to my heart. (also, Lay Flat will be printed on paper, and paper will be hip again after the apocalypse.)

okay, maybe there are a few other reaons. get more info from creator Shane Lavalette here.

ben

2008-10-22T22:10:00.000-04:00

i was looking through Jody Rogac's portfolio and was arrested by this one image, "Ben." very striking stuff. i think it would be cool to see a whole project of similar portraits.

Rogac also does a lot of editorial work. on her site, the portrait of Ben was paired with one of Miki, which i also enjoyed, but felt that it's prettiness was just sort of too pretty. what do you think?

subject echo: in inky dark water

2008-10-21T13:07:00.000-04:00

today i was struck by the subject echoes in some of Esther Teichmann's and Yann Orhan's work:

two images by Teichmann, from her project "Viscosity:"

and two from Orhan's project "Nos Vies Invisibles:"

like every day

2008-10-20T19:51:00.012-04:00

i was looking at some work by contemporary Iranian photographers and came across the project "Like Every Day," by Shadi Ghadirian. i really love these photographs. i think they balance political commentary with visual interest well, with a dash of surrealism and without being cloying. tall order.

and as a bonus, i really enjoy the reflection of Ghadirian in the top image's teapot as an additional mirror on muslim women and the subject in photography.

i also find her project statements refreshing. she says of her work:

"I am a woman and I live in Iran. I am a photographer and this is the only thing I know how to do. It does not make a difference to me what place the Iranian woman has in the world because I am sure no one knows much about it...

It was very natural that after marriage, vacuum cleaners and pots and pans find their way into my photographs; a woman with a different look, a woman who no matter in what part of the world she is living, still has these kinds of apprehensions. "

you can see more work by Shadi Ghadirian and other artists on the website of Houston's DeSantos Gallery.

meat after meat joy

2008-10-17T13:33:00.008-04:00

since i am a fan of Pinar Yolacan's meat portraits, i am hoping to check out the show "Meat After Meat Joy" at Daneyal Mahmood Gallery.

i like this quotation from the gallery's statement:

"If the flesh disturbs you, then the reality behind the issue would disturb you far more if we opened our eyes long enough to see it. We live in a culture disconnected from what it is doing to itself and others, we choose to ignore rather than deal with the reality we have created for ourselves." – Adam Brandejs

a bit more abstractly, curator Heide Harty adds:

"The distorted, damaged, deformed body as depicted in modern and contemporary art is an obvious metaphor for the deformation of the soul, if you will, of the fact that we are all born human and that few of us die terribly human, a sort of Rousseauian perspective. Reducing the body to meat or having humans interact with meat or even avowing the meat-substrate of the living body is a way of addressing the typical deformation of people through any number of social and political processes, not to mention the simpler ones of family, love, rivalry, hatred, etc."

(what was the original "Meat Joy"? more info here.)

grey vegas

2008-10-14T09:17:00.002-04:00

a reader pointed me toward the group photo site Grey Vegas. it hasn't been updated in a while, but i thought it had some fun, fresh stuff on it.

am i finally falling for the hipster snapshot aesthetic? lord help me.

my (portraity) picks from Grey Vegas below, by Joseph Addison, Will Ward, and Rory McCartney.

(Joseph Addison)

(Will Ward)

(Rory McCartney)

desire despair

2008-10-09T21:29:00.001-04:00

thanks Rachel Hulin for posting these Marni Horwitz photographs!

these two images, from the series Desire Despair: Pictures from the Czech Republic, are especially great. i had never seen Horwitz's work before.

take care of yourself / prenez soin de vous

2008-10-09T13:30:00.000-04:00

i was looking again at Sophie Calle's entry in last year's Venice Biennale (Take Care of Yourself, in which she records different women reading the break-up email her ex sent her). and i realized that i really like the project as a collection of photographs as well as a conceptual installation. it works on both levels.

more on the project at etapes, the space in between, and design boom. installation view below.

political-erotical-mystical

2008-10-08T13:50:00.002-04:00

i just saw this quote on Exposure Project.

"I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum."

—Claes Oldenburg, 1961

love it. i want to see a contemporary photograph that is full on political-erotical-mystical. (all three. not just two!)

what have you got for me, internets?

here are just a few that i think nail two, but not all three categories:

erotical-mystical:

(Miranda Lehman)

(Hanna Liden)

political-erotical:

(David Wojnarowicz, from Rimbaud in New York: not a fresh, contemporary image, but still so amazing.)

(Jen Smith, quoting Catherine Opie. Opie's work would fall into this category for me as well. actually, a lot of work falls into the category of 'political-erotical,' but not all of it moves me especially...)

political-mystical:

(can mystical and political co-exist? they often repel each other. but i think this one fits the bill, by Guillaume Herbaut, from the Asgarda series.)

political-erotical-mystical?

please send thoughts my way! you get to define the terms however you wish.

critical discourse

2008-10-07T13:29:00.008-04:00

i've been interested to see the beginning of a discussion about criticism in art photo blogging. Joerg at Conscientious wrote about it (asking why there isn't more constructive criticism of photographic work instead of the current state of bloggy cheerleading), and Noel at We Can't Paint took another lens to the same question (blogs with a strong curatorial eye, even if they only imply positive comments, are critical in themselves).

i've thought a lot about this question, since my mode of address on Subjectify is fairly personal--dare i say subjective--and i use a lot of "i statements." i'm not really that interested in telling the internet all about myself (i don't post up my own work, for instance), but it's more wouldn't really know how else to share thoughts (and not feel like an ass). i have a lot of photographers emailing me their portfolios and i usually respond fairly frankly and yes, critically--i don't post that stuff up on the blog--and i'm always surprised when people thank me to say they have never/rarely received constructive negative feedback in crits before. of course some don't reply at all. (um, special this week: send me work that you want me to rip to shreds?)

i'm not really carving out a visual aesthetic with a sharp eye here, the way iheartphotographabsolutely is. just commenting on things i see in portraiture that engage me and make me want to pontificate about them. usually because i like them--they move me. sometimes because i didn't like something that everybody is talking about, or felt uncomfortable about something. still, sometimes i've felt like i offer slightly more negative commentary than others, and then i feel mixed about it. and Joerg says he thinks that people are worried about their "careers," but i sort of doubt that that's it.

what do you think? any great examples of "critical" discussion out there in the "blogosphere" that have particularly stood out for you? do you even want to see more of this? is a strong curatorial hand more engaging?

some other bloggers' responses are here, here, and here at re: Photo.

p.s. i am so totally loving ahndraya parlato's rainbow-hand image above!! (no, seriously, prism rainbows ftw.)

bruce

2008-10-03T23:00:00.000-04:00

i am always interested in how photographers perceive their subjects, so i enjoyed checking out not just the photos but the accompanying essays on the website for the gallery show "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" at Michael Mazzeo Gallery.

here are some of photographer Josh Quigley's thoughts on his subject, Bruce (above).

"Bruce is a nudist and I thank him for it. Bruce provided me with an opportunity to capture so much of what I have been trying to convey in my work in one image. I cannot tell you in words my revelation because you need to discover it for yourself. Try being naked for a day, take a walk in the woods, and ask yourself, “Where do I belong in this world?” Bruce knows."

subject echo: evaporating sentiments

2008-10-02T22:35:00.001-04:00

i couldn't resist this non-portraiture subject echo:

both Augusta Wood's "making way for the next thing to touch the ground near you" and Kotama Bouabane's "I'm Not Mad" feature dissipating messages written (on wood) in liquid or ice. also, houseplants! also also, they are both totally awesome and thought-provoking.

two prints from Kotama Bouabane's series "Melting Words" are up for sale at Jen Bekman's 20x200 right now.

i first saw Augusta Wood's work on iheartphotograph. i really like her snow photo, called "it turns into nothing on his tongue."

aperture spotlight: women, in the photography

2008-10-01T21:43:00.008-04:00

last night i went to the "Women in Photography" talk in Aperture's new Spotlight lecture series, hosted by the super Laurel Ptak. the talk was packed to the gills! i'd visited the Women in Photography website several times, so it was interesting to hear the perspective of the founders, Cara Phillips and Amy Elkins.

i knew the site was aimed at increasing visibility for female photographers working in the contemporary fine art mode, which is a lovely thing, especially if that's your passion. but i hadn't realized, until (the very well-prepared and well-spoken) Cara pulled out a powerpoint of statistics, how much the site's mission came out of a direct desire to remedy the fact that women face inequality as an identity category in the commercial art world--an inequality that they measured in major institutional credibility as well as dollars and cents. the discussion reminded me of many i've had among my white, middle class peers in, say, Women's Studies classes in college. especially when Cara offered the perspective that it was important for women to "learn to be powerful" and that if one believes in good things like equal pay, then it makes sense to identify as a feminist. but, you know, i think these things just feel more complicated for some people.

i think i am in a privileged position to not want to measure success by the number of solo shows women have had at MoMA last year (1 out of 18) or the number of women among the top grossing artists. i do not dispute that these facts are real and that they really affect people. however, i'm mainly interested in work that is successfully provocative and discourse-inducing. even if it is less popular, more difficult to track down, or made by people without genders. but hey, if i were out there trying to pitch myself to Gagosian right now, i might be feeling a lot more like Cara and Amy.

Amy quoted Imogen Cunningham, who, when asked how being a woman had affected her life as a photographer, replied "I'm a photographer, not a woman." i couldn't tell Amy's intention in conveying the quote, or whether she felt critically that it reflected a sad necessity of Cunningham's era. (interestingly, Diane Arbus had a similar, but maybe less revolutionary, twist on this: "Look, I'm a photographer, not a woman photographer.") personally, i find Cunningham's remarks fascinating at face value--but don't feel a stake in prioritizing or analyzing her identifications. but i imagine that for many of the photographers featured on Women in Photography, being a woman is primary among their personal identity politics.

the discussion also reminded me that i should push harder in my own quest to seek out interesting, diverse work to think about and talk about, and not just pick through the obvious links. (once again, these events make me feel like the internet can sometimes make itself a small place.) it also made me realize that focusing on portraits on Subjectify has seemed to mean that i single out female-identified photographers more often than not. i definitely wonder why that is--and whether my eye, my identity, or an affinity for portraiture might be a cause.

overall, i was very happy to hear personal stories from panel photographers Elinor Carucci and Robin Schwartz, and to see previews of more of their new work. (i had seen Carucci's work a lot and had questions about how female beauty, nudity, and confessionalism factored in. so it meant a lot to hear about the work from her perspective--and i especially enjoyed her thoughts on the erotic tension of family relationships. one of her photos, "My Mother and I, 2000," is featured above.)

i deeply appreciate all of the panelists for their honesty, humor, and willingness to share.

(and tonight Justine Kurland was presenting at Aperture but i got sick and couldn't make it. YouTube, anyone?)

nothing happens in june

2008-09-30T13:24:00.000-04:00

i just saw Whitney Hubbs' project "nothing happens in june" for the first time and really liked the two images above. (is the subject in the bottom photograph on a cell phone? that's great.)

Hubbs is in UCLA's MFA program, and is one of the organizers of the ubiquitous Art for Obama auction.

'cuz you got a crush...

2008-09-29T20:58:00.009-04:00

okay, i've been out of the blogosphere for a while (traveling through North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio -- in other words actual non-Brooklyn America) so i at first missed the email that cool photographer Ahndraya Parlato sent me about a new venture that begins on October 1st.

what do Susan Meiselas, Catherine Opie, Todd Hido, Katy Grannan, Uta Barth, and Abelardo Morell have in common? they are totally kick ass, and they are all totally participating in the Art for Obama auction. as if you hadn't heard. more scoop and more awesome photogs at http://www.artforobama.net

rich, ultra-conservative contemporary photography fans are just watching this auction, with twitchy wanna-biddy fingers, crying. if they exist. the rest of you can bid away. for America. i've been there, it's pretty.

the yummy photo above is "New Orleans (after Bellocq)" by Laurel Nakadate. i could have posted one of the Obama portraits in the auction, but somehow i don't think that's why you read Subjectify. :-)

Conscientious has an update on this project. the money raised is now going to MoveOn.org. yeah, i did wonder how they would sell $5,000 prints and not run amok of campaign finance rules and maximum donation limits... more here.

on vacation

2008-09-18T09:25:00.001-04:00

please excuse the lack of posting y'all—i'm going to Dollywood!

photobooth

2008-09-16T10:57:00.001-04:00

yay for the photobooth blog.

p.s. it's got one of my favorite local photobooths indexed on it, too.

guns, girls, and keds

2008-09-15T08:40:00.002-04:00

can i just say how much i love Amy Stein's idea for customized Keds?

her image above, from the "Women and Guns" series.

alessandra sanguinetti: the life that came

2008-09-12T00:57:00.003-04:00

i was excited to see Alessandra Sanguinetti's "The Life that Came," since it is a continuation of her wonderful project "The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of Their Dreams," about two cousins growing up together on their family's farm in Argentina.

i expected to love the new work, and, although the images are lovely, i didn't really love them. i think maybe this is purely an emotional response--and that the new photographs made me sad. maybe in my mind i let Guille and Belinda stay as floating symbols, with the freedom of dress up, smell the flowers, gender play, swim all day, and generally run around in their underwear. it's nice to see their closeness continue. but it was harder than i expected to see them grow up.

i'd be curious if anyone else had a similar reaction.

you can check out "The Life That Came" on Women in Photography and in real life at Yossi Milo Gallery. the artist's reception is tonight, from 6:00 - 8:00 pm.

psychodrama

2008-09-10T23:44:00.002-04:00

i enjoyed these photographs by Jill Frank, from her upcoming show Psychodrama, opening September 12th at Golden Gallery in Chicago.

Frank says that the show "expands on the form of psychotherapy by asking her subjects to sit before the camera to record & memorialize some of their most traumatic, awkward, and embarrassing moments. The creation of these missing pictures negates the generally accepted custom of employing photography to anchor memories of happy times & celebration."

september

2008-09-08T08:09:00.001-04:00

i recently saw a self-portrait by Amy Montali in PDN's gallery announcements--it captured my imagination especially because i immediately fancied it a queer image, despite the fact that it only showed a figure's white back in a darkened room. but tantalizingly enough, i can't find the image online, and Amy does not have a website or a lot of web presence (which is kind of refreshing!).

so, instead, please enjoy the above images by Amy. i really like the work of hers that i've seen so far. the third photograph, above, is called "september," and i enjoy the naughty puzzle of its composition. and after spending yesterday afternoon in my Brooklyn garden, the september leaves and drooping flowers feel just right to me.

if you are in Boston, check out Amy Montali's work at Gallery Kayafas, september 5 - october 11. there is also some more info about her work here.

and, of course, this is my favorite part of her artist's statement:

"Left unchecked I fall in love with the images of my subjects. I stare at people and consume them by photographing. Maybe this is problematic, but I grew up molested by movies and TV. The media reached into my visual panties long before I was old enough to make informed decisions. Now I too prowl around in the dark."

Amy, you can reach into my visual panties any day. so feel free to send more work this way!

the windowpane and the landscape

2008-09-05T08:45:00.010-04:00

earlier this week, i posted Wolfgang Tillmans' quote that "a photograph is always seen through its content," and was reminded of one of my favorite passages from the bible (er, i mean, Roland Barthes' book Camera Lucida):

"A specific photograph, in effect, is never distinguished from its referent (from what it represents), or at least it is not immediately or generally distinguished from its referent... It is as if the Photograph always carries its referent with itself, both affected by the same amorous or funereal immobility, at the very heart of the moving world: they are glued together, limb by limb, like the condemned man and the corpse in certain tortures; or even like those pairs of fish...which navigate in convoy, as though united by an eternal coitus.

The Photograph belongs to that class of laminated objects whose two leaves cannot be separated without destroying them both: the windowpane and the landscape, and why not: Good and Evil, desire and its object: dualities we can conceive but not perceive."

honestly, that's why i am interested in photography, and really, in portraiture.

i would like to look at photographs that capture the awesomeness of both the prose and the sentiment here—photographs that make me feel the amorous and funereal immobility at the heart of the moving world, that show me the condemned man and the corpse, the windowpane and the landscape, desire and its object—and yes, fish coitus too. and photos that do so while making me grapple with the special trouble of separating the object from the thing it depicts.

and, as always, if you see any like that, let me know.

photographic and literal mysticisms

2008-09-03T00:17:00.003-04:00

last week, i touched on the topic of the 'new mysticism' in contemporary photography in a discussion of the Young Curators, New Ideas show. one of the artists in the show (and also alleged as a new mysticist), Noel Rodo-Vankeulen, emailed me a thoughtful response on photographic mysticism and his own work.

"Great Grandfather with Freemasons," above, is one of my favorite photos of his. i love the way it mixes family history, portrait-as-document, analog vs. digital, and pokes at the mystery and ritual of freemasonry with some freaky, postmodern special effects. it's from his series Nocturne.

Noel says:

"I can’t speak for the other photographers in the show but for me this tendency, to highlight and/or deconstruct the medium’s properties (photographic mysticism which we can be critical of, and photographic mysticism that is attached to all photography whether we like it or not), is heavily rooted within my upbringing. This is to say that, unlike previous generations who used photography as a crucial way to understand, confront and engage with social issues, political unrest, and war, my relationship to photography is related to my upbringing by the intrusive and numbing hand of media (news, movies, TV, computers, etc).

I know war and heroism through highly graphic movies, vehicles of unrealistic archetypes. The ways of the universe (both spiritually and spatially) have been prodded into my consciousness by robots streaming data back from the very edges of the solar system. God is no longer a viable entity and the psychotropic drugs don’t get her/it/him to speak - realistic computer generated pixies and dragons are far more telling.

With all of this in mind I refuse to buy into the medium’s influential ability to mean significantly (its importance as a vehicle for substantial change in an all but uninterested world), however, this doesn’t mean that photography being produced today is uninspired or vacant, it's just aware of its relative unimportance. So this may explain why there is an inherent “prettiness” in so much photography as well. I take this notion and make banal beauty to subvert the notion of having to live up to the medium’s past and present quality control. My photos are small, often single editions of minimal captured prints. I want people to consider how digital and analogue image-making co-exist now and forever, how our thirst for better, faster, stronger, shapes our understanding of value in a medium tied to craftsmanship.

A quote by Wolfgang Tillmans on The Sonic Blog sums our present relationship with photography perfectly:

“The initial question everybody asks when confronted with a photograph is, who is it? Where is it? When was it made? How it was taken? A photograph is always seen through its content and rarely through its presence as an object in itself.”

I take a photograph to show you an object, loving its business both in thought, tangibility and commerce."

thanks so much, Noel, for your thoughts—and for letting me post them. (and i think there are several topics here that are worth discussing in more depth, too, especially questions of beauty and questioning the photograph's referent.)

here & there

2008-08-27T08:03:00.002-04:00

i saw Katie Shapiro's work for the first time and thought it was well worth checking out.

the photos above are "jamie and david on a blanket," "on the floor," and "sisters." (i'd love to see a general artist's statement for her thoughts on her portrait work and how it all fits together.)

Katie Shapiro is also a part of From Here to There, an LA-based collective of photo/art folks. (their website says that they meet biweekly to discuss art. in real life — like a book club! ok, maybe this isn't a crazy idea, but perhaps a refreshing alternative to internet connections.)

(thanks Carmen for the link.)

photos of photographers taking photos

2008-08-26T08:51:00.003-04:00

yesterday, 'Young Curators, New Ideas' organizer Amani Olu forwarded me ArtCal's new review of the show. i thought it was interesting and that others might want to check it out too.

but i thought one of the reviewer's points was a bit strange:

"Charles Benton's Opposing Photographers presents a more conceptual bend... With two back-to-back slide projectors cued to trade slides of photographers, the work catches the viewer in a crossfire of sorts — an interactive, if less inspired, update on Janice Guy's seedier works."

in the 70s, Janice Guy took mirror self-portraits (see below), featuring reflections of the camera and her nude, reclining body. (i don't find them seedy.) it's an interesting link to make, because at first it seems purely visual: both works happen to have a camera in them. but it's true that both projects explore and poke at the dichotomy between subject and photographer.

i perceive Janice Guy as exploring the agency of the subject and the role of the feminine in art. her photos are purposefully sensualized, and also contain the mediation of the mirror as a reminder of the question of vanity (and gaze).

Benton's work (above) is also concerned with the line between photographer and subject, but is even more interested in the troubling third: the viewer, placed in the middle of the volley between the two. the curator's statement says the piece aims "to experience not just the gaze of the photographer towards his or her subject, but also to reflect that gaze back and enable the viewer to experience both subject and object simultaneously." a bit grandly stated, perhaps, but cool to think about. my take on the slide presentation was that it was cute and fun, and did something interesting with the snapshot cliché of folks with cameras taking photos of each other.

what do you folks think? are there links to Janice Guy that i'm not thinking of?
(also, are there actual seedy photos of hers that i haven't seen? — oh, do send them on.)

otherwise, one of Guy's photos was in the New York Times yesterday too...but wait, haven't i seen that in the Times before? oh yes, last year. gee, they sure love sticking that photo at the top of their arts reviews... see below. i thought it was interesting to see the different tones/contrast in the Met-supplied image vs. the White Columns-supplied (2007) image.

8/25/08:

7/10/07:

photos: where are they at?

2008-08-25T00:27:00.016-04:00

so, before i went to check out 'Young Curators, New Ideas' at Bond Street Gallery, i promised to come back with my take on the exhibition's offer of "where art photography is today." i did come up with an answer for your consideration, and it's posted below some thoughts on the show itself.

the show: the exhibition offers the viewpoints of six curators. though they obviously aren't all attempting to conclusively tackle the question of where art photography is in grand terms (especially given how quickly the show was put together), all six curators present themes that point toward possible answers to our question.

i'd group the exhibitions into three loose categories: 1) the first and most straightforward for me was Amy Stein's exhibition, which presents a new crop of photographers working in the directorial tradition of Sherman and Crewdson. these folks, like Alix Smith and Ofer Wolberger, are interested in identity and storytelling and photographic authority.

2) the second group i would describe as pretty pictures with themes of magic, light, and new mysticism (Grant Willing & Alana Celii and Jon Feinstein's exhibitions both explored these). i have to admit that i find a lot of these beautiful, which makes me question them a bit. there's a lot to plumb here (perhaps a few more posts worth), but for discussion-starters i liked Jon Feinstein's interview with Shoot! about the turn toward 'photographic mysticism.'

3) my final grouping was of three curators who seemed primarily interested in questioning photographic forms, and the deconstruction of the meaning of the photograph (Michael Buhler-Rose, Laurel Ptak, and Lumi Tan). obviously this topic is dear to my heart. i enjoyed Buhler-Rose's presentation of Charles Benton's "Opposing Photographers": a timed slide presentation of two guys taking pictures of each other taking pictures of each other. incredibly simple, yes, but how fun to see a thoughtful and playful meditation on one of the most common snapshot clichés. and of course, Laurel Ptak's commissioned animated GIFs stood out (not the least because so many people at the opening reception were crowded around the flatpanel screen watching them animate). of the 26 photographers who contributed GIFs, Noel Rodo-Vankuelen stole the show. (his GIFs are GIFtastic. check out his "Father" above and "Black Monolith," below.) Karly Wildenhaus's are amazing too.

many of the themes presented do overlap and coalesce toward a certain kind of vision of art photography today. but overall -- where is it at? -- i have to say there was one obvious but largely unspoken elephant in the room: the internet. not only had i seen most of the photographs in the show online before, but the show itself definitely had a vibe of people who know each other from the internet posting up paper pictures of some of their favorite photos that they saw on different websites. i don't think this is a negative thing, but it does warrant some thought. and it is definitely something i will be pondering as i, too, contribute more posts and links about various photographs that i primarily, if not exclusively, encounter online. (of course, these questions have been tackled before, here's one interesting and topical starting point.)

the most self-conscious exploration of internet-as-co-curator is also the reason that the animated GIFs were so interesting: because they are a low-brow computer/online digital form being presented on an expensive television screen on a gallery wall -- not to mention being "sold" for $20 each. clever stuff. i think the only thing that could have been better than this, in terms of questioning photography and poking at its online migrations, would be to print each frame of the GIF out individually on paper and turn them into flipbooks.

for those folks who have also checked out the gallery show on Bond St. in lovely Gowanus, Brooklyn (and i do recommend that you check it out), i would love to hear your thoughts as well. Google is returning 3,700 hits for "Young Curators, New Ideas," and frankly the thought of reading them all is freaking exhausting. so i turn to you, dear readers.

young curators? new ideas? okay!

2008-08-13T13:10:00.001-04:00

tonight i'll be checking out the 'Young Curators, New Ideas' show at the Bond Street Gallery. each young curator "aims to engage viewers in a discussion on where he or she believes art photography is today."

i will report back on where art photography is at today. (apparently, it's in Gowanus. yay.)

the photo above is by Gerald Edwards, and it's called "Meditation on the Fall of Single Family Dwellings," which is obviously an awesome title.

james cooper's underwater images

2008-08-05T20:12:00.013-04:00

i happened across James Cooper's work on Tiny Vices and got a kick out of it. he seems to have a very specific world that he is documenting, and i enjoy the persistence of his vision.

Cooper lives in the Bahamas and mainly shoots digital underwater photographs.

He says of his work: "I have a hard time putting words to my pictures, they are on one level very personal in that they are reflections of my own experiences, and yet once they become 'public' I want for them to be very open ended and universal. I actually try super hard not to over analyze my work, which helps me to just be responsive to my own ideas."

there's even a mini subject echo for me here (with Maura Biava):

notes on soth

2008-08-04T01:41:00.003-04:00

1) just feel it! this is my favorite image so far from Alec Soth's exploration of China in "The Eagle and the Dragon." the project contrasts the rise of China (including a feature on the Olympics) with the decline of middle America.

for more, check out the Telegraph's series of articles. (however, i have to say, the scan that appears on Telegraph.co.uk is a bit of a mess. [click the image to see larger.] dust spots, hair, scratches?)

2) how did i miss A Photo Editor's interview with Alec Soth about his erstwhile blog? (gee, it's only the 4th Google hit for Alec Soth's name right now.)

APE: Your blog is still cited as one of the best on photography and you’ve not made a post in almost a year. Do you think any photographers will come around and usurp your title?
Soth: Of course. I’m sure it has already happened.

sigh. well, no, it hasn't, really. (has it?) this is sort of an insincere exchange, but also makes you ponder.

3) not sure if y'all caught this special profile on Alec Soth's former cover subject, Charles Erie, in the Twin Cities Daily Planet, but it's a doozy. i'll sum up:

"While Erie has had some fun with his famous picture, he feels queasy about his image circulating the globe and strangers making assumptions about him.... Like Native Americans and the Amish, he’ll be very suspicious the next time a photographer drives up to the house. Crazy Horse, who allegedly never allowed his picture to be taken, once explained this mistrust by saying, “My friend, why should you wish me to shorten my life by taking from me my shadow?”"

the confrontational american landscape

2008-08-01T13:05:00.010-04:00

speaking of terror-ists, i recently saw Christopher LaMarca's book Forest Defenders: The Confrontational American Landscape featured on Flak Photo.

his project follows the conflicts between activist "forest defenders" and the government and timber industry. this topic grabs me because i am always fascinated to see the Bush Administration's creation of new language to use as little missiles in the war for cultural viewpoint dominance... and i love to check and see which media outlets are using neologisms like "eco-terrorists" with and without scare quotes and/or editorial buy-in. (you can survey Google news for this. also, looks like the word "eco-terrorism" has its own Wikipedia page now.)

LaMarca and his publisher instead, in their blurb for the book, describe the forest defenders (rather sentimentally) as "much-maligned advocates who are willing to sacrifice their comforts and freedoms to stand up for wildlands."

i like the book's cover image (top) a lot—it gets its point of view across very boldly and immediately. i wonder if that is LaMarca's editorial and commercial photography background showing through, too.

point of view aside (can you ever put point of view aside?), i am compelled by the idea of a "confrontational American landscape," and LaMarca's photographic attempts to visualize that confrontation, through both portraiture and landscape work.

subject echo: "who has the detonator?"

2008-07-31T01:34:00.005-04:00

like several other Americans, i went to see Batman: The Dark Knight on opening night. a gray-area girl at heart, i admit that the theme of good vs. evil often elicits a bit of a yawn. so the Joker is a refreshing terrorist to me—preferring, as he does, chaos to evil.

the Dark Knight's refrain of "Who has the detonator?"—and especially the scene above, where the Joker holds a remote detonator in his right hand as he shuffles away from Gotham General hospital—reminded me very strongly of a few of Diane Arbus's most famous shades of gray: Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park (1962).

forty-six years later the tensions on display in this photograph are just as relevant—between childhood and adulthood, playfulness and violence, tensing up and letting loose, even the city and nature. (and i love a photograph with its own Wikipedia page.)

so, who has the detonator?

a child, a joker? (a privileged portrayer of freaks and outsiders, a big Hollywood director trying to aim a lens at our anxieties and desires?) or perhaps it's me, you, or some other? maybe that is the fear.

Arbus wrote:

"I have this funny thing which is that I'm never afraid when I'm looking in the ground glass. This person could be approaching with a gun or something like that and I'd have my eyes glued to the finder and it wasn't like I was really vulnerable. It just seemed terrific what was happening. I mean I'm sure there are limits. God knows, when the troops start advancing on me, you do approach that stricken feeling where you perfectly well can get killed. But there's a kind of power thing about the camera. I mean everyone knows you've got some edge. You're carrying some slight magic which does something to them.

It fixes them in a way."

"i have to be conscious, if you like, of the impossibility of photography"

2008-07-22T13:13:00.001-04:00

"I have a deep suspicion of photography, to the point where I do sometimes think it cannot accurately portray anything, really. And, I particularly distrust portrait photography. I mean, do you honestly think a portrait can tell you anything about the subject? And, even if it did, would you trust what it had to say?"

— Pieter Hugo, in The Guardian

alp

2008-07-21T08:30:00.001-04:00

i first saw Swiss photographer Vanessa Puntener's work over on Mrs. Deane.

these images are from her project "alp."

the middle image draws me in the most—i want to be inside of it and feel how it feels (sucking hole!). as for the portraits, i have to admit that the children of these alpen villages seem a bit forbidding...

nathan

2008-07-18T08:56:00.000-04:00

after Carmen Winant mentioned Gilda Davidian's work in our interview last week, i've gone back a few times to look through Davidian's portfolio.

i keep coming back to this one image: Nathan, 2006, Pasadena, California.

it's just beautiful, and perfectly composed.

subject echo: tiny bodies in the milky blue white sea

2008-07-15T08:45:00.002-04:00

above: Sze Tsung Leong, from Horizons; Catherine Opie from Surfers, and Carlo Van Der Roer, from the series Orbs.

these are a bit like the float, but even more inscrutable.

got more to share?

p.s. update: read "A Picture You Already Know," by Sze Tsung Leong here, on Words Without Pictures. it's about repetition in photography (oddly enough).

three questions for carmen winant, part 3

2008-07-11T08:19:00.002-04:00

part three of three questions for Carmen Winant. (thanks again, Carmen! come back and visit anytime.)

Subjectify: What are you looking for when you photograph a subject?

Carmen Winant: I think that contemporary photographers are inclined to posture their subjects as either completely aware or unknowing of the camera’s gaze. (I always think of how Hellen Van Meene’s young subjects rarely acknowledge the camera. Even when they do, their gaze seems hazily unfixed and unspecific.) But of course there is a liminal space—between the manufactured nature of Gregory Crewdson’s work and the sincerity of Robert Frank’s—and that is what I am continually striving to tap when taking pictures of the people in my life. Because the two poles can be quite seductive, it is easy to overlook the substantive and interesting ground between the performed and the unstaged. I think several interesting young photographers right now, like Gilda Davidian and Amy Elkins, are exploring that grey area of representing subjectivity without much distance or irony.

Richard Avedon said that he wished there could be no camera at all, that his eye could be his only mechanism of transferal. For me, however, the camera is a protagonist in producing strong portraits. I shoot film with a Hasselblad 501c, and it requires a deliberate set-up, a relatively long time to focus (which I sometimes consciously extend to increase the slight discomfort of my sitter), and an almost violent, gun-like release. I want a contrived and a sincere subject, and it doesn’t seem to me that the two have to deny each other.

Concerning the difference between a portrait and a biography, my friend, poet Geoffrey Hillsebeck wrote to me once:

A portrait doesn't make a claim while a biography does. That’s often the difference between visual art and the written word. Do portraits always present what is mysterious in the subject; do they always confront you with the impossibility of the enterprise? Can one know Madame X or Rembrandt better by standing in front of the paintings longer, the way one gets to know friends better by spending more time with them? Rembrandt said he wanted to get at the "deepest inward emotion" of his subjects. Biographies never try to do that. They are always supremely conventional, in structure, organization, approach. They are works of history usually, not imagination.

three questions for carmen winant, part 2

2008-07-10T09:08:00.003-04:00

part two of this week's conversation with emerging photographer Carmen Winant.

Subjectify: Your mother seems like a remarkably willing subject. Does she enjoy being photographed by you? Is she central to your project Close?

Carmen Winant: I have always admired photographers who photograph their own families in earnest – Sally Mann, Tina Barney, Larry Sultan, and Elinor Carucci, among many. They make it look so effortless. It is a classic motif, but in some ways it’s harder than photographing strangers. In my case, I am most interested in exploring the tension (and uncomfortable overlap) between familial and erotic intimacy.

My mom doesn’t always enjoy sitting for the camera, but she has been incredibly generous. I regard my mother lending her body to my work as a gift, and am really encouraged in her own belief in the power of picture-making. She is also really striking, which certainly doesn’t hurt in creating a compelling image.

I have taken lots of images of my family that I cherish but that they understandably find too personal to promote in the world. So, I really admire my mother not only for allowing me to take the images, but to show them.

three questions for carmen winant, part 1

2008-07-09T08:03:00.003-04:00

shortly after i first saw Carmen Winant's portraits featured on Conscientious, i got an email from her out of the blue. she had just started a new process of engagement, if you will, pledging to post a photo online every day for a year at daily afterthought--and she wanted to talk blogs.

although i liked many photos in the portfolio that Jörg had linked to, they didn't suck me in as complete projects. it was Carmen's written voice that compelled me, and the single, out-of-context images that she was posting up each day at daily afterthought that reeled me in. (i mean, how many people have a fresh and good new portrait every day? even dipping into their archives?) though she's still playing with different approaches and themes, Carmen has a pretty consistent vision. her best photographs, to my eye, are unexpectedly sensual and deeply emotionally engaged. consider me seduced.

i'm pleased this week to offer three brief questions / discussions with this emerging photographer about her work and her confrontation of the subject.

Subjectify: In many of your portraits I feel that your compositional eye has a way of closing in on, or immobilizing the body. As objects, the bodies are posed, perhaps, but particular, imperfect and unsentimental. Are there specific things you are trying to express in your work about bodies and their relation to spaces?

Carmen Winant: My photographs have always been concerned with the body. Before I began photographing, I was a very technical illustrator, and all my illustrations also took on the body exclusively. I was a competitive distance runner from age 15 – I ran track and cross-country for UCLA – which I think informed my fascination with the physicality of the body. And then, as I became a feminist and concerned with debates around identity politics, I became open to seeing the body’s potential in art to manifest critical gender issues.

I am of course always thinking about the body’s relationship to context and space. But beyond that, I am interested in the body’s relationship to the absence, or denial, of space. This is most overt in my ongoing series Dark Matters, in which the space becomes a reductive, recessed vacuum. I was attempting to make a series of pictures that were both classical and radical by oversaturating and overexposing to the point of total darkness. Usually I go too far, and the negatives are often way too thin to use.

In addition to removing referents, I tend to narrow in pretty tightly on the bodies of my subjects. In fact, I was repeatedly asked in UCLA critiques why I didn’t just back up already and give the viewer some space to breathe. I think this is really evident in the series Close. And thinking about it now, it’s telling that I chose to shoot environmental portraits (the At Home project) in cramped New York City apartments, that wouldn’t afford me the space if I wanted it. So, the spatial confinement is always a component. It can feel a little claustrophobic, so I try to be careful about not overloading my images with information. If an image is successful, the body will serve as the only punctum.

Finally, I tend to photograph my subjects’ backs quite a lot. My mom has a theory that my preoccupation is due to my own medical diagnosis at age 17 of severe osteopenia, which requires me to get my spine density tested and monitored with some regularity. I like to think that it is another (more deliberate) method of drawing in the viewer with an intimacy that is very carefully and tentatively measured. A turned back can represent several conflicted signals of bodily power. It clearly indicates a loss of control for the sitter, who is perhaps being looked upon without their knowledge. Yet a turned back is also a refusal; ultimately, the onlooker is the one being denied or powerless. Also, I am interested in the notion that the audience enters subjecthood through a turned back, as in, we can only be absorbed into the subject through the back of their head. I feel that all successful and complicated portraits have to have this element of emotional incongruity.

band camp

2008-07-07T08:09:00.001-04:00

i love these portraits from Greg Miller's series Band Camp. it's a great idea for a project.
(plus, are these kids so bershon or what?)

The Year in Pictures tells me that Miller is currently working on a project about Nashville... which reminds me that i really have to finally go check out Nashville someday soon.

the return of the amazons: asgarda

2008-07-03T08:02:00.009-04:00

i am completely entranced by Guillaume Herbaut's project "Le Retour des Amazones," set in Ukraine.

it focuses on a group of 150 women, led by Katerina Tarnouska, who call themselves "Asgarda" and seek to bring back the Amazon tribal tradition. they have been training as a militia and as a community for four years. (i didn't realize that the Scythian Amazons referenced in Greek myth actually came from the area that is now south Ukraine—these women trace their mythological heritage back to those ancient countrywomen.)

there's more going on here spiritually, and politically, too—as you can see from the t-shirt in the top photo, these women also idolize Yulia Tymoshenko, the icon of the Orange Revolution and leader of the Ukrainian "Fatherland" party. (there also seems to be a bit of a Xena: Warrior Princess fetish going on too, if this photo is any indication.)

it's totally fascinating, and i wish i knew more (also, reminds me of a book i just read, as well as other utopalyptic thoughts i've been having lately.) but for right now, Asgarda's story seems relatively untold, except in these photos. more info here.

really great stuff! the photographer, Herbaut has been labeled a member of the "poetic documentary" movement in French photojournalism, which perhaps explains why his visual approach seems to blend photojournalistic and fine art styles.

(more selections from the project available on PhotoShelter.)

p.s. click on the top image to see it bigger because it is so rad! i want a sickle (or a scythe). the subject's name is Marianna Revenko and she's a 19 year-old student.

photopoetics: nothing was ever what it claimed to be

2008-07-01T08:18:00.003-04:00

last week i wrote a bit about photography's relationship (as an art form) to writing and literature. it often occurs to me that a photograph can be more kin to a poem than to a painting.

one photographer who calls this to my mind is Rinko Kawauchi. she's probably one of the more famous Japanese fine art photographers; i admire her work but sometimes find the images a bit impenetrable—in a good way.

for some reason, i thought of Kawauchi when i read this sonnet, from poet Karen Volkman's new book Nomina:

Nothing was ever what it claimed to be,
the earth, blue egg, in its seeping shell
dispensing damage like a hollow hell
inchling weeping for a minor sea

ticking its tidelets, x and y and z.
The blue beneficence we call and spell
and call blue heaven, the whiteblue well
of constant water, deepening a thee,

a thou and who, touching every what—
and in the or, a shudder in the cut—
and that you are, blue mirror, only stare

bluest blankness, whether in the where,
sheen that bleeds blue beauty we are taught
drowns and booms and vowels. I will not.

-Karen Volkman

Kawauchi's photos often have a cool, blurred, blue tone that i thought matched up well. not to mention a sense that they might not be what they claim to be.

(i think it would be fun to do more photo / literary pairings like this.)

the oracle @ wifi

2008-06-30T08:23:00.002-04:00

i am a great fan of divination. the free interpretation of visual symbols—cards, tea leaves, palms, entrails—has long provided a safe and figurative framework for analyzing the events happening around us or the emotions inside of us.

the "Oracle @ WiFi" by Beth Lilly is both an interactive art project and also a system of divination, in the manner of the I Ching or tarot cards. when Beth-as-Oracle receives a call from a client, she takes three photos of her surroundings and emails them to the caller. then the caller emails her back with what their original question was.

the results are some fun and sometimes thought-provoking juxtapositions. i picked a few that i liked above that also integrated portraiture. they are called "what will the earth be like in 50 years?" and "when will i finally make some money?" (click to see each bigger, Blogger does not love horizontal images.)

if you would like a reading yourself, here are Beth's instructions. on the 7th day of each month (just like the original Oracle at Delphi):

"If you'd like to participate...

1. Write down your question so it's clear in your mind.
2. Call my cell phone at 404-805-5431
3. Keep your question secret!
4. I'll take 3 images at random and email them to you.
5. You reply back with your question"

(seen via lensculture)

words worth a picture: amy hempel

2008-06-25T01:03:00.009-04:00

i ran across a passage in The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel tonight that is much more arresting than most of the photographs i've seen lately. (especially since i am one of those people of the mind that photography is closer to writing in many ways than it is to other visual arts...)

enjoy.

"I took one more picture that night. It was after Grey had walked me home. He found a box of photograph corners, the black stick-on kind that frame the picture on the page. He opened up our album, pasted four of them in place.

It was Grey who took the picture; the picture he took was of me. It was candid—I wasn't posed—and the instant, the Polaroid, is what he used. When the blank square of film emerged from the camera, he tore it off and slipped it in the corners on the page, and then he closed the album cover before the image could develop.

That picture is something I lost in the fire."

from the story "Pool Night."

undressed

2008-06-23T07:38:00.001-04:00

i just checked out DB Whitaker's site (after seeing one of his photos as a pic of the day on iheartphotograph) and enjoyed his approach. i love the top image, "undressed." (and there's a fun trick in the bottom one, "reach snow.")

subject echo: hair in branches

2008-06-20T00:41:00.006-04:00

lately i have noticed a lot of ladies with their hair tied up in branches. it makes for pretty, romantic images. and perhaps it makes for thinking about girls, gender and long hair, nature, ties, and other metaphorical tangles. but what is it all about?

Julia Fuller-Batten's work (above, middle) is all about adolescent girls, so it would make sense to me if Hellen van Meene (top) were an influence. and Steffanie Halley, recently featured on Conscientious, is a recent SCAD grad whose project places women in the natural landscape... another theme we've seen a lot of lately.

my personal instinct would be that the bottom two are echoes—conscious or subconscious—that serve as aftershocks to the power of van Meene's image.

however, one commenter on Shoot! said that the second image above is a "direct reference" to Harry Callahan. is this true? if so, he would have set the trend off then, maybe even 50 years ago. but i am skeptical. i've seen Eleanor's hair, spreading out wet and stringlike. i've seen Eleanor's face, superimposed over grasses and branches. but i don't know an image of Eleanor's hair tied up into branches.

anyone care to school me? (or the commenter?) or share any other thoughts on this theme?

p.s. reader Suzanne's comment (below) is so right on—i definitely think that Sally Mann's "Yard Eggs" is another major influence here. the composition (and symbolism) is a little more complex than the three above, but the hair getting caught in the branches is definitely a punctum. it made me realize i've seen this image online, but not sure i have seen a print of it. the resolution of the jpeg is a bit soft, and i would love to see the detail better, especially in how the hair is caught (and not just blowing). thanks Suzanne!

untitled hot shots

2008-06-17T00:08:00.001-04:00

ooh, i forgot that the latest round of Hey, Hot Shot! competition and its related bloggery was going on right now.

i really like this photo by contender Jamie Campbell, who i remember seeing on Conscientious before. nice. the composition, pose, and colors just work for me.

it's from his newest, untitled series. the other shots in the series so far leave me a bit colder though. i think something about the lighting is turning me off. the draped, posed, and hidden bodies in domestic spaces remind me of something partway between the fictioned fantasy of Gregory Crewdson and the reality of something more like Taryn Simon's the Innocents. only with more humor and without the intensity of the point of view.

waffles, winter, and selfportraits

2008-06-16T08:05:00.001-04:00

a while back, students Daniel Augschöll and Anya Jasbar sent me the link to their site, We Love Hot Waffles.

god, who doesn't? in honor of our shared love of hot waffles, i picked some of my favorite photos by Daniel (immediately below) and Anya to post up.

i don't think this first one is intended as a diptych, but they were side by side on the site, and i really liked them together (click to see them bigger).

Anya, meanwhile, has pretty great project titles. below, from "it's almost winter," and "it should be winter."

another of Anya's projects is called "When you're not here, i do my selfportraits."

nerve: a little off topic

2008-06-13T00:02:00.002-04:00

your (n^th) favorite blogger (i.e. me), plus some photos, some funnies, and some fire: here.

p.s. hello Nerve readers. do you like photos? if so, here are some of the smuttier (ha, ok, not really) Subjectify posts:

john currin and the pornography of the photograph

jessie mann on sexuality and buttless chaps

photographing virginity

how large is your negative?

hint

2008-06-12T08:52:00.001-04:00

i just checked out Jodie Vicenta Jacobson's work. i was surprised i hadn't seen it before. she's a Brooklyn-based photographer and curator.

her latest project (including the middle two pictures, above) is called Hint. funnily enough, i'm having a hard time getting a grasp on what it's all about.

the Wild Project's statement about Hint says:

"Making pictures involving diverse subject matter, the artist’s thoughtful treatment of tender fruits, illuminated shadows and entangled limbs reveals a sensual, poetic sensibility. In Peaches, nestled between pillows, two luminous fruits touch, encircled by a curved spectrum of refracted light. The image communicates how a chance phenomenon can be transformed to evoke beauty’s dark side...Jacobson’s instinctual images give the impression of a deeply felt personal experience infused with a quiet appreciation of the darkness, hidden sensuality, and grandeur of the natural world."

the times imitates art

2008-06-11T01:15:00.001-04:00

here's a bit of a subject echo that hit me today while reading the New York Times article "Operation Lets Muslim Women Reclaim Virginity."

here's Ed Alcock for the Times:

and Taryn Simon from her project the American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar:
both photos have that klieg-lit surgical theater of apotheosized artificial virginity aspect going for them.

don't get me wrong, i love cyborgs. but don't forget: your subject is your main enemy.

subject as enemy

2008-06-10T09:04:00.003-04:00

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.

kelly

2008-06-09T08:02:00.006-04:00

Stephen K. Schuster sent me a copy of his new book, Kelly, a personal project that is a study of his relationship with his ex-girlfriend. beyond Schuster's images, i really enjoyed the experience of looking through the book and thinking about its meaning and how it was put together.

to that end, i enjoyed the introduction by the ubiquitously delightful Jon Feinstein. not to mention the irony of his statement: "Looking at these photos, you won't know the details of Kelly's past or that she and Stephen's first encounter was a one night stand." of course, now we do know these things (and others). but how do they color a stranger's glimpse into an intimate relationship, and how do they intend to color it?

there are several lovely, fine-arty portraits in Kelly.

and also several provocative ones.

because Subjectify (and my brain) mainly focuses on questions of the interaction between the photographer and the subject, many of the portraits in Kelly beg the question of what it means to publish naked, happy photographs of your ex-girlfriend of two years...after the breakup.

the punctum of these for me is one vivid nude image in the middle of the book that is printed half and half on either side of the gutter—making it become, to me, a kind of subverted centerfold of the book. (my snapshot of this to the left.) Kelly lays on the bed, covering her head with her arms, and only upon cracking the spine firmly can you make out the wry smile on her face. otherwise her face, expression and form are lost in the fold. i found the way this was printed in the book to be very evocative. it works, and it made me think. it's also a beautiful photograph. i asked Stephen about the printing, and he said that the image is central to the book for him as well; and that he was urging his designer to lay it out it differently in the second edition. personally, i like the difficult layout choice (whether the effects of it are intentional or not), and i would stick with it.

because of the intimate nature of the photos, i do think that Stephen's inclusion of a few images of himself along with his subject is a good—and ultimately necessary—self-conscious touch. one place in particular where this holds true is the very last image inside the book; printed smaller, as a postscript, you see Stephen's hand on Kelly's chin, tilting it up, posing her, asserting himself as the photographer and her as the subject. the loved object. as a final image, it made me think of the Roland Barthes quote (not from Camera Lucida for once, but from A Lover's Discourse): "Absence can exist only as a consequence of the other: it is the other who leaves, it is I who remain. The other is in a state of perpetual departure, of journeying; the other is by vocation, migrant, fugitive."

as for the lovers' journeys, Jon Feinstein writes in the introduction that because of the nature of Kelly, "the viewer is confronted with a pastiche of photographic asides." in places "pastiche" seems exactly the right word. since these images were taken as, well, part of everyday life and travels and journeys, we see Kelly smiling for the camera on vacation, in a motel room, relaxing nude in a pool, giving her best suicide-girl look in the shower. as Stephen says "We both love to take off and the camera was always there." on their own, these images don't do much for me. but in context, the narrative builds in places into a pastiche of the snapshot, perhaps even a critique of the types of ways—even clichéd ways—we (photographers? Americans? lovers?) use and interact with cameras in our personal lives and relationships. i don't know if this is intentional, but it certainly inspired a lot of thought in me.

if you would like to check out Kelly for yourself, Stephen is selling limited edition copies here.

p.s. for blogger/photog Liz Kuball's take on Kelly, check out her post on it here.

political portraits

2008-06-04T22:41:00.010-04:00

my friend Fletch sent me this link to an earnest Daily Kos post about the importance of professional photography to political candidates, especially in state and local campaigns. it gives Tester, Webb, and Kleeb as examples of candidates who have done right by prioritizing professional photographs instead of "crappy photos taken by the intern with a consumer digital camera." (of course, the Canon Powershot A590 and the Canon EOS 10D are kind of consumer digital cameras, but point taken...)

i thought it was interesting, first of all just to read about photography qua photography being analyzed in the discourse of a political blog. second, because the particular pictures in question aren't all that great.

but i see what he means. i was intrigued by the Scott Kleeb photo (directly above) because i thought it was so cheesy -- as though it were an HDR ad from some big energy company trying to pretend they were going green and loved ethanol or something. but it inspired me to go to his website and check out his other photos -- and goddamn this man is like a HOT GAY COWBOY. i'm going to move to Nebraska and vote for him. i think Kos might be on to something.

and now back to our regularly scheduled portrait programming. :-)

incidents

2008-06-02T22:50:00.005-04:00

i just saw this photo by Gonzalo Puch of Spain for the first time (here) and i love it. i guess i missed it in Chelsea a few years back.

the setting reminds me a bit of Hanna Liden's scenes of water-and-fire tribal travelers, though less fictioned as a narrative. i think the image would be less compelling for me though, without the figure hovering over the spheres.

the Julie Saul Gallery says of Puch: "He creates situations or "incidents", generally in neutral environments... However, the events taking place are inscrutable rituals or quiet procedures which are both serious and comic. They appear to have their own logic in which we can recognize the elements, but not their organization, like words without syntax."

full text of jessie mann's interview

2008-05-31T17:14:00.007-04:00

someone sent me a reminder that i had promised to upload a full text version of the Jessie Mann interview that ran here last week. (you people are freaks. freaks! i love it.)

seriously, for the unexpurgated interview (all 8,192 words, including an additional bonus question), you can now view and download it as a Google Document here.

and here are the individual blog posts that make up the interview, with photographs:

Jessie Mann interview Part 1: knowing Jessie

Part 2: on modeling for other photographers

Part 3: on musehood and subjectivity

Part 4: liberating the subject

Part 5: gender, sexuality, and performance

Part 6: shooting in the mirror

Part 7: kahlo, art, and painting

let us now praise famous ptaks

2008-05-29T08:29:00.001-04:00

i've been a fan of Ms. Laurel Ptak (and her singular eye for photograph) for some time, but i just wanted to say that iheartphotograph has featured some really cool portraiture lately. i've discovered all sorts of work by new folks.

here are a few of my recent faves from the site:

photos above by (top to bottom): Magdalena Fischer, Patrick Madigan, Sarah McEmie, Melissa Kaseman, Kanako Sasaki, Chris Fortescue, Charles Benton, Stuart Hawkins, and Lisa Byrne.

jessie mann interview, final part

2008-05-28T08:22:00.001-04:00

today's post wraps up Subjectify's seven-part interview with subject extraordinaire, Jessie Mann. at the end of today's question, Jessie talks a bit about her own work as a painter—to see more of her paintings, please check out her website here.

(for those psychology fans out there, there is a bonus question below about Jungian personality types. to find out your own type, take a Myers-Briggs typology test here.)

thanks again to everyone for reading seven days of the interview (and to Jessie for bearing with me!), and for your great emails and comments. it's been fun.

Subjectify: Is Frida Kahlo an influence? I feel that her self-portraits are unmatched, in a way, for the powerful sense the viewer gets that she was reaching out again and again for something... Do you think that you are reaching out for something as you approach the kind of work you do as a photographic subject? Is it different than what you are reaching for in your own work as a painter?

Jessie Mann: Frida Kahlo has been an influence for me since childhood. Her books were on the lowest shelf of my mom’s art library, so they were some of the first I engaged with. It is interesting to have had a relationship with an artist’s work for as long as I have, so much of the way in which one understands an image remains untouched despite all the information one may gain over time about the work, or the artist, or even about life. One of those untouched understandings is that sense of reaching, which you mention. I felt that immediately in her work and I do think it is something that I connected with even as a preliterate child. That is one of the great things about her work—you can read it right away, its truth is on the surface. That feeling of reaching is one of the strongest sensations I associate with portrayal. It doesn’t feel like tugging at something, or like pulling, but more like jumping, like the long jump, like you could throw yourself across some line. I imagine for her a lot of that reach was a desire to exist more fully outside of her body. To make more real her abstract self in order to in-substantiate her pain ridden existence. My motivation is different though my desired end result is the same. I think I simply want to assert the mythological self because it has been shortchanged, not me.

As to how this relates to my experience painting—that is tricky. I think the photos are where I play with the literal and the mythic. They are where I engage myself in the art—and tackle specifics. The paintings are selfless and abstract. They are more about the nature of reality—organic patterns and light, than about any specific aspect of life or culture. I don’t feel that I am trying to go anywhere when I paint, or that I am trying to bring myself to anything, but rather that I am trying to expose something about where I already am. The photographs feel to me, like Frida’s work, as if they are moving through time, the paintings are stillness. There is a necessary ‘autobiography’ in that effort to capture a moment of experience, which the photographs also play with. The paintings speak of surroundings more than the interiors and reflections in the photos, but they both become a template for the spirit behind identity.

Subjectify: Bonus question—I’ll throw this one in because you’re a Jungian—what’s your Myers-Briggs personality type?

Jessie Mann: INFP.

jessie mann interview, part 6

2008-05-27T08:09:00.000-04:00

part six of Seven Questions for Jessie Mann...

Subjectify: What’s going on in Untitled Plate 29? Are you looking in a mirror?

Jessie Mann: Yes, I am. A lot of the pictures were taken through a mirror, in fact. The use of mirrors in different ways is part of Len’s photographic practice. Furthermore, I found it helpful for technical and experiential reasons—I could check my placement and the scene—I could see what he was seeing. After we had taken a few through mirrors for technical reasons, Len and I began to see the poignancy of the act. The mirror functioned as a stand in, or metaphor for, the mirror world of our creation—my reflection: the mirror self which I assert. During the process of shooting the photos, by looking first at a reflection of what we were making I was reminded immediately of the other side of perception—both in the individual viewers mind and in the noosphere at large. The mirror image also references the reversed and upside down image Len is working with, and the flipped again final image we strive for. The above-mentioned plate was made very early on in our collaboration, and is one of the first of a trend that would develop wherein the mirror itself—or the studio behind the backdrop—would show in the picture. This coincided also with Len’s ideas of showing the wig line or my dirty feet marks on the background paper. To let the literal slip in to the image.

The mirror and the slipping backdrop help to remind the viewer of the self-conscious creation of it all. It is to assert, always, that it is the make believe that matters not the extent to which it is believable. It is our way of engaging the viewer in the putting together of it, it is a wink—that we know we’re acting but that you should just play along—or in the words of Erving Goffman—we tacitly agree to help each other preserve the performances through which we present ourselves to the world—but in our case and with the mirrors and slipping wigs it is not all that tacit, after all.

One of my favorite ‘mirror pictures’ is the Madonna one—which is a good example here, because not only is it one of images in which the mirror plays a significant role but also it is a good example of a woman—to hark back to the last question—who entirely crafted her own character and was able to create a fully realized woman (strong, creative, productive, and feminine) in the process and, she, as well, explicitly referenced the queer-queen love.

The entire plane of the photograph is the surface of a mirror, except for the stage and the actress. Furthermore, I am looking into the camera which is reflected back at the viewer, so that they too are engaging the lens. I am holding the shutter release in this one (not in this case to go back and give agency to the character as we discussed above, Madonna certainly doesn’t need any but) as a means to reference the ‘pose’ or the self-conscious vogueing which Madonna perfected. Also as a means to reference the extent to which Madonna created herself—something not seen often in today’s stars.

Len sits in the back of the room watching—also in costume—and seen as a reflection. This reminds the viewer that they are implicitly in the room, a reflection of themselves. That they are playing a part—I can see them, and they can see themselves. This is an awareness that Madonna certainly possessed—that she was a voyeur as much as an exhibitionist, she wanted to watch us looking. But also of importance here, and again I think the mirror plays a part in this, she realized that she too was exposing, not just herself, nor just ourselves, but the freestanding myth as well—she seemed always to know that she was playing the part of the anima—to which she and the public, were servants. Again, this is the reason for the slipping wig, and the double version of the figure in the image, to reference the costume used and the spector self created therein. Madonna knows it is all about the show, the reflection is the truth, that fundamental and superior to the self, is the character—the archetype—the myth.

jessie mann interview, part 5

2008-05-23T08:13:00.005-04:00

part five of Seven Questions for Jessie Mann. the gay part.

Subjectify: Self Possessed definitely tackles ideas of gender and performance, and the subject or muse as a feminine archetype. Do you subvert that dynamic in your role as the conscious subject? The characters you portray in Self Possessed include Mapplethorpe and Warhol. I imagine that their queerness helped them disrupt the traditional barrier between subject and artist in their work. How does that function in your project ? Does Len Prince’s sexuality, or yours, have an impact on your work together to question the role of the subject?

Jessie Mann: This one is my favorite question! I like your use of the word queer—it is my favorite for such discussions, and so I will stick with it. For ease, I will once again break this question down into two broad topics: the first, being the idea of gender and its relationship to the subject in art and culture. The second being the role of sexuality in this collaborative project and others. To start, I do try to subvert a few ideas. One of them being that women in art are silent objects. Another, that women in collaborations were inevitably exploited or in someway manipulated into acts of self exposure. And still another, the idea that it is women who have exclusively populated the role of muse and/or artistic object. By speaking about my role, from my position, I am able to at least assert that one woman was not silent—is not silent, was not exploited, will not be exploited. That it is possible for the muse or the subject to bring artistic action to a collaboration. I try to get people to question the assumptions we make about women in art, and the subject in general. I am often asked why I didn’t “just take self portraits?” But a very important part of this project is to assert that the act of collaborating with the artist is artistic, that what women have been doing for so long, is “enough”—I don’t have to take the pictures myself; I can even pose nude for a man (gasp) and it can still be me making art. Additionally, by portraying Warhol, Dali, Mapplethorpe, and Beuys I am reminding people that the use of the self, the body, and one’s character in art is not something reserved for women, while at the same time giving a nod to the fellows that gave me the precedence to take on this theme.

It seems to me that both queers and women are particularly appreciative of the distinction between self and character. Here I would reference Wilde as a prime example of this self aware posing that is widely practiced by queers and perfected by the all-too-rare brave woman. Why this talent is most frequently, or even exclusively, developed by queers and women, is perhaps another chicken or egg question. Do women and queers feel the social need to separate identity from character, is the external flamboyance assigned to women and adopted by queers a result of social roles/pressures or is a certain amount of flair and show simply a part of the wonderful nature of said human beings? This is maybe another question I don’t really have the answer for, but I do love the discussion.

And though the overlap between queer culture and the cultural identities of women is infinitely interesting to me, I would like to take this opportunity to turn the question around. Why don’t straight men make characters of themselves? Why is it that queers and women share this trait but straight men don’t? Is it that they think of themselves or are seen as the fallback position—no need to define yourself when you are vanilla—everyone else has to add flavor, or is the straight male identity lacking in character? A notable exception to the rule that ‘the straight man’ doesn’t make a character of himself are writers. Hemmingway, Hunter S. Thompson, and Phillip Roth with his alter ego Zimmerman, all made characters of themselves as much as they wrote new ones into existence. Perhaps, something of it has to do with the position of the observer. From that stance, the outside, the viewer develops a sense of the play of it all. Or, maybe, the artistic spirit can, in fact, be channeled into ‘character making’ as a medium, and ‘outsiders’ simply tend to make good artists.

Finally, on the point of sexuality—I think it is relevant to this project that Len and Jason Paulson, who did a majority of the make up and styling on these photographs, are partners. I think that is a cog in the dynamics of this project that people are not generally aware of when they are introduced to this work. One blogger, reviewing the work, wrote that it was just another example of the dirty old man looking at the young girl posing. Just more of the male gaze. I found this hilarious. Definitely not for the first time, but maybe for the first time since people have been allowed to be open about their sexuality, we have been openly documenting an archetypal love—the queen for the queer and vice versa. I wonder how many collaborations of this kind have gone down to history in silence. The sexual dynamics of our team also allows the character I make of myself freedom from just that male gaze. In might be that the absence of a sexualized air, a familial environment (if you will) allows me to fully integrate my character as a woman—self possessed—sexual yet not objectified—a character—yet one who writes her own dialog. When I asked Len about this question, he said that gay men get this work better; they are looking for the nuances of meaning in a dialog that uses their language, in short, they are not distracted by the tits. I don’t know if that is really true, but there is so much of this work that speaks to queer identity and the many suits (of armor perhaps) that women wear. Someone once said that Monroe flirted with the camera, Len and I might just be pulling a ‘deadpan camp’ right back at the camera— itself known for its pregnant silences and contrived blankness.

jessie mann interview, part 4

2008-05-22T08:07:00.001-04:00

part four of Seven Questions for Jessie Mann...

Subjectify: In "Self Possessed," I get the feeling that some of the roles you take on are role-models for you in the type of self conscious subject you want to be, but some of the characters are ones that you want to liberate or give some agency to. . .i.e. reach back and hand them the cable release for once… Are there other muses out there that you feel are kin to what you are doing with subjectivity? Who inspires you?

Jessie Mann: You are right that nearly all of the subjects (who were once or are actually real people) are people that I admire in some way—a few of the characters I ‘do’ made work themselves that I depend on theoretically with this work, the giants on whose shoulders I stand, such as Kahlo, Warhol, Beuys, and Sherman. And again, you are correct in that I very often want to go back and bring some information or awareness to the scene; to augment the collective understanding of a character—fictional or real. Often it’s too late to give it to the character themselves—but I can honor them and in a way, as you say, liberate them. I can use the freedom of speech, which I am granted as a postmodern character, to give their freestanding abstract a new agency.

There are so many inspiring characters out there which we have yet to do—and I am very excited about what’s on the list. Len and I have taken about 9 months off, so the list is overflowing right now, though on the bright side I have been able to grow my hair out. Recently, I have been interested in Jonathan Meese as a contemporary artist who is making part of his artistic practice the act of turning himself into a character. Also Francesca Woodman, whom I have shied away from, because of the tragedy in it—for a long time I only wanted to do characters that seemed self possessed as opposed to tragic—but I am coming to reconsider her work and whether or not it—the work itself, is tragic, or if it wasn’t more of a repository for her faith and hope in the power of the image and the life of the mirror self. We last did Dali and I got a real kick out of it, I have been wanting to do him for such a long time—he made such a fabulous character of himself—he was so outlandish—I really wanted to try that suit on, and there were so many fun gender issues to address.

Are there muses out there that I think took to their role as subject self-consciously?—tons. Are there muses out there that have examined the subjectivity unique to the perspective of their abstracted character and the ways in which that subjectivity challenges the normal understanding of self? Not that many. I think, to pick up the Woodman point, had she lived, she might have gotten to a point wherein she expressly autonomized the mirror self she was creating (Perhaps that was what she was attempting with the suicide?). Also, Sherman’s clown pictures I think very much reference the specific experience of mask wearing—there is a tragedy to them or at least something unsettling—as if she is pointing out there is something behind it all which we are still not seeing—the sadness under the painted smile. Though, to contrast, the mask is not speaking for itself of itself, just as her abstracted girls did not address the camera, but were captured in action. So, perhaps the prostheses works are the most in sync with this discussion, as they addressed directly the creation of a near separate self which the viewer then imbued with character and a certain autonomy.